Student Science Hitches a Ride on Dragon
International Space Station (Photo credit: Jeff Van Campen)
I was a little bit busy with other things when news of this came out. The SSEP (Student Spaceflight Experiments Program), part of STEM Education (Science, Technology Engineering and Mathamatics), flies micro-gravity experiments to space for K-14 students. SSEP missions started out flying aboard the Space Shuttle, but starting this year they will run on the International Space Station.
The latest SSEP mission was scheduled to launch on Soyuz, but a problem with the Soyuz capsule ended with “SSEP Mission 1 to the ISS” being bumped off of Soyus and onto Saturday’s historic flight of Dragon.
I really get psyched at opportunities for the youth to make space science. This time I’m double psyched because they get to make space history also. Along with the hopes and dreams of commercial space advocates and scifi nut cases like myself, Falcon will carry with it the hopes and dreams of students who put together 15 different science experiments to be carried out aboard the ISS. Click here to read more about it, but then click again on the stories section to see more of what SSEP means for the upcoming generation.
I’ll post a link to the live streaming video feed here sometime tomorrow for the launch that is scheduled to take place very early Saturday morning (or you can find the link yourself on NASA.Gov, SpaceFlightNOW.com or SpaceVidCast.com). Stay up late with me (or get up early) and we’ll watch together as a new paradigm is forged that could change the world. This is real…real science…real progress…real ground-breaking get-’er-done and its all happening now.
Don’t miss it.
Related articles
- NASA says competition is key to private space race (rawstory.com)
- SpaceX Counting Down For Historic Launch To Space Station (wired.com)
- Meals, Equipment Top Cargo List for Dragon (spacefellowship.com)
- SpaceX gets the green light for mission to ISS (slashgear.com)
- Private companies join the space bar (4a2012.wordpress.com)
- Space Station – Here We Come! (space-travel.com)
- First private launch to the ISS scheduled for 5am tomorrow (arstechnica.com)
- SpaceX Dragon to smuggle SECRET package to the ISS (go.theregister.com)
- SpaceX historic ISS launch streams live from NASA (slashgear.com)
Bill-
Way cool article! It’s great that you’re excited for these students and their remarkable adventure.
Dr. Jeff Goldstein
SSEP Program Director
Center Director, Nat’l Center for Earth and Space Science Education
(we are onboarding communities right now for Mission 3 to ISS)
Thank you for your kind words, Jeff. I meant what I said too…I’ll be up in time to watch the show (even though it’d two hours earlier for me)! Night launches are cool enough anyway, but historic night launches are something to never miss.