The Kansas City Area Life Sciences Institute helped fund the Student Spaceflights Experiment Program (SSEP) Mission 10 to the International Space Station (ISS) in Lansing, Kansas. The program encourages the next generation of scientists and engineers by allowing middle school students to create a science experiment that will be conducted at the ISS in the fall of 2016. Students are encouraged to collaborate with local scientific experts in designing their experiments.
About 600 Lansing Middle School students have worked in teams to create more than 60 proposed experiments. The top three proposals selected were:
- “Sodium Retention” 8th grade student principal investigator Sarah Wilson and co-investigators Leighann Crutchfield and Grace Slattery in Mrs. Lee’s class;
- “The Growth Of A Plant in a Sodium Polyacrylate-soil Mixture” 8th grade student Co-Principal Investigators Martayah Mitchell and Molly Romano with Co-Investigators Jamie Preston and Victoria Valverde in Mrs. Lee’s class
- “Possible Effects of Microgravity on Development of Dictyostelium discoideum” submitted by 7th grade students Co-Principal Investigators Aaron Brown, Calista McPherson, Vinay Patel, and Geoffrey Stentiford from Ms. Major’s class.
These proposals were submitted to the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education for review and they selected “Possible Effects of Microgravity on Development of Dictyostelium discoideum” to be conducted on the ISS.
SSEP Mission 10 supports the growth of regional life sciences by facilitating student involvement in the classroom, inspiring original scientific thinking, and creating partnerships between students and local scientific experts.