To assist student proposers and their Teacher Facilitators, we have assembled the suite of resources listed below.
1. Technical Assistance
Technical assistance is available to student teams throughout the experimental design process, to help with an understanding of the design constraints imposed by the experimental apparatus, the flight timeline, and the on-orbit protocols for conducting the experiment; and to address any general flight experiment questions and concerns.
The SSEP Program Manager will serve as point of contact for all questions and will maintain and oversee the suite of resources listed on this page. If you have a question Contact the SSEP Program Manager.
2. This Website
We have designed this website to be a comprehensive, online, easy to read environment with full details of the Student Space Flight Experiments Program. Listed below are links to the important pages at this website for Student Teams and their Teacher Facilitators concerning the experiment design competition and details concerning the process of experiment design and mini-laboratory operation:
Visit the Flight Experiment Design Competition page for a great understanding of the experiment design competition in your community and an overview of the straightforward proposal submission process,
Visit the Designing the Flight Experiment page for a great overview of how to think about framing an SSEP experiment.
For the SSEP opportunity on STS-134, visit the STS-134 Final Flight of Shuttle Endeavour page, providing a STS-134 mission overview, as well as it’s important sub-pages:
STS-134 Critical Timeline, providing important milestones and due dates
STS-134 Mini-Laboratory Operation, providing operating details and specifications for this easy-to-use min-lab, and important experiment design constraints
STS-134 Fluid-Sample Compatibility Test
For the SSEP opportunity on STS-135, visit the STS-135 Final Flight of Shuttle Atlantis page, providing a STS-135 mission overview, as well as it’s important sub-pages:
STS-135 Critical Timeline, providing important milestones and due dates
STS-135 Mini-Laboratory Operation, providing operating details and specifications for this easy-to-use min-lab, and important experiment design constraints
3. The SSEP Document Library, and the Student Proposers Resource Library
The Documents Library provides SSEP participating communities all the documents necessary to conduct the SSEP. All documents referred to throughout this website, as well as additional resource documents, are found here. This Library serves as a single download point for all documents, and provides a description for each.
The Documents Library also includes the Student Proposers Resource Library containing important information on the science of microgravity, case studies of microgravity experiments in the mini-lab to be used, and proposal requirements to help guide student proposers on experimental design, proposal submission, and experiment samples submission.
We have set up two separate FAQs for SSEP, both of which are updated as questions are received by the SSEP Team. The SSEP Program FAQ addresses general program questions, while the STS-134 Flight Experiment FAQ and the STS-135 Flight Experiment FAQ address questions specifically regarding experiment design, the flight hardware to be used, and the experiment design constraints.
5. To Teachers—How to Move Forward
This is a wonderful resource for getting teachers up to speed in a straightforward (even painless) way on the Student Spaceflight Experiment Program and getting their students moving on experiment design. On this page you will find a step-by-step recipe for engagement in the classroom using the resources on this SSEP website.
Jump to To Teachers—How to Move Forward page