SSEP | Student Spaceflight Experiments Program

In March 2011, I had the wonderful honor of giving the Keynote Address to 6,000 teachers of science at the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) National Conference in San Francisco. The talk, “Science, it’s Not a Book of Knowledge … it’s a Journey” was about the nature of human exploration, and that science education—indeed all […]

Communities interested in exploring participation in SSEP Mission 1 to ISS will be excited to learn that the Fluids Mixing Enclosure (FME) mini-lab being used for SSEP on ISS has dramatically more capability than the Materials Dispersion Apparatus (MDA) used for SSEP on STS-134 and STS-135. Based on SSEP operations on STS-134 and STS-135, NCESSE […]

Private Sector Effort Offers Real Research Opportunity for Grade 5-16 Students aboard International Space Station, 50,000 Expected to Participate Next Phase of Bold New STEM Education Program that Attracted National Attention with Student Experiments on Final Flights of Shuttles Endeavour and Atlantis, and Provided Participation to 30,700 Students Sunday, July 31, 2011 Video Overview of […]

The following stories have just been added to the SSEP In the News page at the SSEP Community Network Hubsite, bringing the total number of stories to 114 —           National Eleven More Feature Article, NASA.gov, July 12, 2011 http://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/eleven-more.html   SSEP on STS-135 Hartford, Connecticut Hartford students get experiment back from […]

Atlantis touched down at 5:57 a.m. EDT, this morning, ending 30 years of U.S. Space Shuttle Operations. Aboard her, for 200 orbits of Earth, was the payload containing SSEP experiments from student teams across the nation. The video below provides Atlantis’ approach to Kennedy Space Center and landing.   We received confirmation this morning from […]

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 […]