Author Archive | Jeff Goldstein

This past year has been a humbling experience for the staff here at the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education and the thousands of students and teachers in the 27 communities participating in the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program. Enabled by NanoRacks Space Act Agreement with NASA, we’ve all had the adventure of a lifetime. We’ve had […]

What? You mean we’ve got to get ready to receive our experiment samples already? But we just got back from the truly spectacular launch in Florida, and we haven’t unpacked yet! (OK, maybe that’s just me:-) Switching to serious— With NASA’s recent one day extension to its mission, Shuttle Atlantis is scheduled to return to […]

NCESSE, in concert with ITA and NanoRacks, has carefully defined the milestones and specifications for the harvesting of experiment samples and their return to the SSEP Student Teams flying samples on STS-135. The milestones reflect the extension of the mission by one day, as announced yesterday, with the landing of Atlantis now scheduled to take […]

At this SSEP National Blog, we recently began posting “In Our Own Words” essays from the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program (SSEP) leadership around the nation, providing insight into what this program has meant to the participating students, teachers, families, and communities. The idea for these special posts grew from interest expressed by the leadership in […]

Last week we got an email with a simple subject line and attached photo that captured one community’s journey. It was from Amanda Arceo, SSEP Community Program Director for Crown Point, Indiana. Anybody else share her excitement (and relief)? The Avicenna Academy Science Community Collaboration is sending two species of paramecium into space to fight it out aboard […]

Annie Fisher STEM Magnet School, Hartford Public Schools in Connecticut, is participating in SSEP on STS-135. Their flight experiment, Microgravity’s Effect on Tomato Growth, is scheduled to blast off on Atlantis on July 8. Their participation in this historic flight is made possible by Hamilton Sundstrand, the Connecticut Space Grant College Consortium, Hartford Public Schools, and […]

Are you getting excited yet? The National Center for Earth and Space Science Education has just completed the final update of the Launch Plans for STS-135 page at the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program (SSEP) website. This update provides new information on breakfast and lunch provided to SSEP attendees at KARS Park on July 8, and […]

Circe Bridges, the Teacher Facilitator for the STS-134 flight experiment from Zachary, LA, wanted to share the following at the SSEP National Blog— Participation in the Student Spaceflight Experiment Program has been an exponential chain of opportunities for not only the students involved, but the entire community of Zachary, Louisiana. The initial opportunity allowed students […]

The National Center for Earth and Space Science Education (NCESSE), and the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum (NASM) have finished updating the SSEP National Conference webpage, which now includes  a complete schedule for the conference, a list of all featured presentations, a list of all student team presentations, conference expectations, and important information for […]

NCESSE is pleased to announce that the SSEP teams flying experiments on STS-135 have finalized their experiment designs, and the final concentrations of all experiment samples, as well as other details of the experiments, have been approved by ITA and NanoRacks. The experiments are now ready for flight! This week, the student teams are shipping […]