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The National Center for Earth and Space Science Education (NCESSE), and its international arm, the Arthur C. Clarke Institute for Space Education, are honored to announce the start of program operations for Student Spaceflight Experiments Program (SSEP) Mission 21 to the International Space Station (ISS) – the 23rd SSEP flight opportunity since program inception in 2010. Mission 21 to ISS officially began on September 2, 2025, and we are proud to welcome aboard the 21 communities listed below.
Each participating community submitted a formal Implementation Plan for review and approval, which demonstrated how SSEP would address their community’s strategic needs in STEM education, and detailed a real world plan for how a Local Team of educators would engage up to hundreds of students in real microgravity experiment design and proposal writing. Based on the Implementation Plans, the 21 Mission 21 communities will engage 3,700 grade 5-16 students in experiment design, and over 440 flight experiment proposals are expected from student teams. A 2-step formal proposal review process, culminating with the SSEP National Step 2 Review Board meeting in December 2025 near Washington D.C., will select one flight experiment for each community.
Of special note –
- 11 of the 21 Mission 21 communities are returning communities: Mission 21 is the ninth mission for iForward-Grantsburg, Wisconsin; the sixth mission for Edmonton, Alberta, Canada; and the fifth mission for Albany, New York. Mission 21 is also the fourth mission for 2 communities, the third mission for 4 communities and the second mission for 1 community
- 12 of the communities are 2- and 4-year colleges and universities focusing on undergraduate engagement, in: Pasadena, California; Colorado Springs, Colorado; Melbourne, Florida; Orlando, Florida; St. Petersburg, Florida; Tampa, Florida; New Orleans, Louisiana; Lowell, Massachusetts; Omaha, Nebraska; Asheville, North Carolina; Athens, Ohio; and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
- 2 communities are in Canada: Edmonton, Alberta and Mississippi Mills, Ontario
Note that the names of the participating institutions for the communities above are provided in the Mission 21 community list at the bottom of this post.
The 21 flight experiments for Mission 21 to ISS will be selected by December 19, 2025, with a projected launch as the SSEP Discovery payload of experiments in late Spring / early Summer 2026.
Community participation in Mission 21 to ISS has been made possible through NCESSE’s strategic collaboration with Rhodium Scientific, America’s first commercial space biotech company. Funding for many of the participating communities was provided by Local Partners – businesses, foundations, and individuals – which provided funding directly to participating schools in their area. The SSEP Mission 21 Community Profiles and Local Partners page is a place on the SSEP website where you can find a profile of each participating community, and where we acknowledge the remarkable support provided by all National and Local Partners. We invite community leadership in each Mission 21 community to explore that page, read about your community, and assess if there are any partners that need to be added. To add partners, please contact SSEP Flight Operations Manager John Hamel, email: johnhamel@ncesse.org.
Program Overview and Heritage to Date
The Student Spaceflight Experiments Program (SSEP) is designed as a national model for STEM education, and immerses up to hundreds of students across a participating community in an authentic real world, trans-disciplinary research experience as part of America’s Space Program. This is not a simulation – we are truly inviting each community into America’s Space Program. We are inviting all participating students to take on the role of real microgravity researchers – formally designing microgravity experiments against real world engineering and technology constraints, writing real proposals against a formal proposal guide, and going through a real proposal review competition. SSEP was created in the very best spirit of allowing our students to see firsthand what is expected of professional scientists and engineers on the frontiers of human exploration. SSEP gives students the ability to make an informed decision about a possible career in a STEM field through immersion in a real world research experience.
Each participating SSEP community is provided a flight certified, microgravity research mini-laboratory and launch services to transport the mini-lab containing one student team designed microgravity experiment to the International Space Station in Low Earth Orbit, where the astronauts will operate the experiment. Each community has a Local Team of educators that first delivers an established microgravity curriculum to often hundreds of students, and the students then form research teams of 3-5 students per team. Each of the resulting teams vie for the single experiment slot provided to their community through design of a research investigation – a microgravity experiment in a science discipline of their choice, and writing a proposal, mirroring how professional researchers secure limited research assets through a formal call for proposals. Review of all proposals culminates with the SSEP National Step 2 Review Board selecting the flight experiment for each participating community.
Heritage: Since program inception in 2010 (through Mission 19), 169,200 grade 5-16 students in 247 communities across the U.S., Canada, Ukraine, Brazil and Portugal have been immersed in real research, designing microgravity experiments to fly to ISS. Over 32,500 formal research proposals have been submitted by student teams. To date, 420 experiments have flown to ISS and returned to Earth for harvesting and analysis by their student flight teams. Over 268,300 more students across the entire grade preK-16 pipeline were engaged in their communities’ broader STEAM experience, submitting 229,100 Mission Patch designs. Each year, communities send delegations to the SSEP National Conference where student flight teams report on experiment design and science results.
To get into the spirit of SSEP Mission 21 to ISS, the video below is the NASA live coverage of the launch of SpaceX CRS-31 from Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 9:24 pm EST, November 4, 2024, the most recent launch of SSEP experiments. The CRS-31 Dragon spacecraft carried the 39 SSEP Mission 18 experiments to ISS. The experiments were conducted by NASA senior astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Gilmore for 6 weeks on orbit, with Dragon returning to Earth and splashing down in the Atlantic off the Florida coast, on December 17, 2024.
The 21 Mission 19 experiments are scheduled to launch on SpaceX CRS-34 with a NET (No Earlier Than) launch date in April 2026 from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Stay tuned.
You can watch videos of all SSEP launches since program inception, with the first two SSEP payloads on the final flights of Space Shuttles Endeavour (STS-134) and Atlantis (STS-135), and see all the astronauts that operated SSEP experiments (you won’t believe how many), at the Launch and On-Orbit Operations History page. From that page, below is the entry for Mission 18 to ISS.
SSEP Mission 18 to ISS
Vehicle: SpaceX CRS-31
Launch: November 4, 2024 at 9:29 pm EST
Site: Space Launch Complex 39A, NASA Kennedy Space Center, FL
Payload Designation: SSEP20 – Surveyor, 39 experiments
SSEP Mission 18 Information: Flight Profile, Media Coverage, Press Kit
Mission 18 Participation: Participating Communities, Flight Mission Patches, Conference Presentations
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOvZbQUQFmM
Astronauts on ISS that operated the Mission 18 experiments:
Sunita performed the A=0, U-5 and U-2 interactions on-orbit.
Sunita Williams (USA), NASA Astronaut [biography]
X: Astro_Suni
Butch performed the A+2 and U-14 interactions on-orbit.
Butch Wilmore (USA), NASA Astronaut [biography]
X: Butch_wilmore
Mission 21 Communities – Welcome Aboard!
Read a profile for each community, with expected student engagement, institutional partners, and community leadership, at the SSEP Mission 21 Community Profiles and Local Partners page.
1. Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
(RETURNING COMMUNITY – 6th Mission)
Edmonton Public School Board
2. Mississippi Mills, Ontario, Canada
R. Tait McKenzie Public School
Mississippi Mills Area Schools
Upper Canada District School Board
3. Mesa, AZ
(RETURNING COMMUNITY – 3rd Mission)
Mesa Public Schools
4. Phoenix, AZ
Paradise Valley Unified School District
5. Glendora, CA
Glendora Unified School District
6. Pasadena, CA
Pasadena City College
7. Colorado Springs, CO
University of Colorado, Colorado Springs
8. Melbourne, FL
Florida Institute of Technology
9. Orlando, FL
University of Central Florida
10. St. Petersburg, FL
St. Petersburg College
11. Tampa, FL
University of South Florida
12. Kailua, HI
Kealakehe High School
13. New Orleans, LA
Tulane University
14. Lowell, MA
University of Massachusetts, Lowell
15. Omaha, NE
Metropolitan Community College
16. Albany, NY
City School District of Albany
17. Asheville, NC
Asheville Buncombe Technical Community College
18. Athens, OH
Ohio University
19. Pittsburgh, PA – CCAC
Community College of Allegheny County
20. San Antonio, TX
North East Independent School District
21. iForward-Grantsburg, WI
Grantsburg School District
The Student Spaceflight Experiments Program 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 collaboration with Rhodium Scientific, America’s first commercial space biotech. 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 endeavor.
Research reported herein was supported by the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space, Inc. and NASA under agreement number 80JSC018M0005 and with Rhodium Scientific under agreement number UA-2021-8282.
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