Aquarius Payload of Mission 1 Experiments Activated by Astronaut Don Pettit Aboard ISS at 10:30 am EDT

From NanoRacks, a few minutes ago—

The Module 9 mix sticks were activated by crew member Don Pettit at exactly 9:30 AM CDT (14:30 GMT) on Monday morning. He called down a couple of times wanting to make sure that he got sufficient bending (~5 degrees) to break the ampules, as he was having a hard time hearing the ampules over the ISS background noise. This much bending should be sufficient to get ampoule breakage.

The activation was delayed several hours due to Dragon cargo ops (another crew member needed his assistance to unpack the Dragon). He requested a call up from the ground at 3:30 PM CDT (20:30 GMT) to get the proper time for deactivation of the stick that has a six hour lifetime. The call up is necessary because it will occur just before his sleep period.

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The Student Spaceflight Experiments Program (SSEP) is a program of the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education (NCESSE) in the U.S., and the Arthur C. Clarke Institute for Space Education internationally. It is enabled through a strategic partnership with DreamUp PBC and NanoRacks LLC, which are working with NASA under a Space Act Agreement as part of the utilization of the International Space Station as a National Laboratory. 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.