Congratulations! Knox County Schools and Fayette Academy in Somerville will both fly a student microgravity experiment to the International Space Station in the fall of 2014 as part of the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program Mission 6 to the International Space Station. The following article appeared on March 2, 2014 in the Knoxville Daily Sun about the Knox County […]Read more
The post TN students’ experiments bound for space aboard International Space Station appeared first on Tennessee STEM Innovation Network.
Congratulations! Knox County Schools and Fayette Academy in Somerville will both fly a student microgravity experiment to the International Space Station in the fall of 2014 as part of the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program
Mission 6 to the International Space Station. The following article appeared on March 2, 2014 in the Knoxville Daily Sun
about the Knox County Schools participation.
KNOXVILLE — Students in the Knox County Schools have the opportunity to design experiments, one of which will be chosen to go into space. On March 1 families learned more about the opportunity during an information fair and kickoff event at the L&N STEM Academy in Knoxville.
The Knox County Schools STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) Instructional Program is sponsoring this school system-wide initiative to involve students in authentic science and offer them the chance to be part of the U.S. Space Program. Knox County Schools is part of the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program’s (SSEP) Mission 6 to the International Space Station (ISS). SSEP is a national STEM education program undertaken by the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education (NCESSE), in partnership with NanoRacks, LLC.
At the March 1 informational event, families and students gathered information about the seven- month process, asked questions and enjoyed space-related exhibits and activities. Student teams will be formed March 3-7, 2014, and teams then commence to design their experiments at any of six designated work-site schools in the Knox County Schools during the research period, March 4-April 27, 2014. On May 1, 2014, three experiments are chosen as finalists and forwarded to NCESSE for a national Step 2 Review at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. One finalist proposal is chosen from the three and will undergo NASA Flight Safety Review before it is sent into space in the fall of 2014. In space, astronauts will perform the necessary protocols for the SSEP student research mission.
SSEP uses a commercial spaceflight payload, which will contain the SSEP student experiments that will be placed aboard ferry vehicles for transfer to the ISS. SSEP is the first pre-college STEM education program that is both a U.S. national initiative and implemented as an on-orbit commercial space venture.
Teams will reflect authentic scientific research teams by consisting of five students from various grades and experience levels. Students in Grades 5-9 can participate on the teams, while students in Grades 10-12 will serve as team mentors. Students in Grades 2-4 will be able to design the Knox County Schools mission patch that will accompany the experiment to the ISS. Students can form their own multi-grade teams or visit the school site of choice to be matched up on a team during the week of March 3-7.
“Nothing inspires like the mysteries of space,” said Becky Ashe, principal at L&N STEM Academy. “This is an authentic science competition in which students work in project teams to learn about microgravity experimentation, design their own experiment to run, and then write a NASA-style proposal and directions to run it. There is no better or engaging support for Common Core-like thinking skills than the math, science and literacy that will be required to be successful in this endeavor,” she said.
This on-orbit educational research opportunity is enabled through NanoRacks, LLC, which is working in partnership with NASA under a Space Act Agreement as part of the utilization of the International Space Station as a National Laboratory.
