SSEP | Student Spaceflight Experiments Program

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 […]

Every once and a while we’ll feature a particular story about SSEP in the news. This one stood out because it provides a good history of both pre-launch activities and Endeavour’s return of precious cargo to three researchers in Ballston, Spa, New York. From the Times Union— This idea went places Experiment designed by Ballston […]

Lenecia McCrary, the SSEP Community Program Director in Broward County, Florida, wanted to share the following at the SSEP National Blog—   Wow!! I can’t believe that it’s been almost a year since I first became aware of this awesome opportunity…students able to propose an experiment to fly in outer space. This was my first […]

Uploaded to YouTube by NASA Television Newly released video shows the International Space Station together with the space shuttle, the vehicle that helped build the complex over the last decade. The video was shot by European Space Agency astronaut Paolo Nespoli from the Russian Soyuz spacecraft that undocked from the station on May 23. He, […]

That National Center for Earth and Space Science Education is proud to unveil the 11 Mission Patches selected to fly along with the 11 SSEP flight experiments on Atlantis. A total of 974 Mission Patches were proposed by students from across the 11 communities participating in SSEP on STS-135. Each community selected its own Mission […]

First some foundational thoughts on education that were fundamental to the creation of the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program, and which grow from the Core Beliefs and Embraced Pedagogy of the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education— In our classrooms, let’s not talk ABOUT science or teach the book of knowledge, let kids DO […]