On Nov. 4 at 9:29 p.m., this year’s Mission 18 Student Spaceflight Experiments Program (SSEP) Project launched to the International Space Station from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The goal of SSEP is to provide students with an opportunity to participate in America’s space program, where they become architects of an experiment to be conducted in space by astronauts on the International Space Station.

This year’s Long Beach project was designed by Long Beach Middle School students Katrina Casey, Kaylee Cooper, Claire Cristallo and Jasmine Davidson-Smith. The mission patches were designed by Mackenzie Pastuch, a fourth grade student at Lindell Elementary, and Emilia Conneally, a sixth grade student and graduate of West Elementary.

The project will spend approximately five weeks orbiting Earth. When it arrives back in Long Beach, Katrina, Kaylee, Claire and Jasmine, with the help of LBHS Science Research student Jose Aguiluz, will analyze to what extent a weaker gravitational field affected the germination of watercress seeds.

The Student Spaceflight Experiments Program is a program of the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education in the U.S. and the Arthur C. Clarke Institute for Space Education internationally. It is enabled through a strategic partnership with Nanoracks LLC, which is working with NASA under a Space Act Agreement as part of the utilization of the International Space Station as a national laboratory.

Date Added: 11/7/2024