SSEP Blog – Ballston Spa, NY

The art students and the technology students at the high school have started working on an emblem to represent our community and our participation in the Student Spaceflight Experiment Program. 

NanoRacks, LLC, will try to fly on STS-134 a paper 4-inch x 4-inch square emblem designed by Ballston Spa students. Given that there are less than 100 days from launch, it may not be possible to get the emblems on this flight, but NanoRacks is committed to trying, and feels there is a reasonable chance of success. And if they don’t make the STS-134, assuming STS-135 flies, which is the final flight of Atlantis, they will work to get the emblems aboard STS-135.

NanoRacks has made this opportunity available to celebrate the remarkable accomplishment of Ballston Spa’s submission of finalist proposals to the National SSEP Step 2 Review Panel. It is an opportunity to keep the excitement alive post experiment selection while waiting for the launch in February, a chance to extend the adventure, and a means to extend the program in an interdisciplinary manner to engage, e.g., art and design classes.

All entries need to be submitted to Science Coordinator Diane Irwin at the Ballston Spa High School by Monday December 6th in both hard copy and electronic format.

The local review team which included consulting engineers as well as representatives from GLOBALFOUNDRIES and the Children’s Museum of Science and Technology has selected the three finalists from the proposals.  The finalists include Milton Terrace South Elementary School 5th grade students Dana Betti, Jordyn Catherall, and Kate Yager, and High School students Denise Croote and Troy Mackey who submitted the top experiment proposals.  The three proposals submitted to the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education (NCESSE) include a proposal from Dana, Jordyn and Kate entitled “Development of Tilapia Fish Eggs in Space”. Their teachers are 5th grade instructors Megan Otten and Angelo D’Annibale. The High School proposals included one from Troy that he entitled “The Effect of Microgravity on Bacterial Reproduction” and one from Denise called “Effect of Penicillin in Microgravity”. Their advisers are Mary Lou Stern and Mary Ellen Kusnierz, both science instructors at the Ballston Spa High School.

 All of the proposals have gone through an initial screening process that looked at completeness, appropriateness of materials, and which was the best proposal on similar topics.  The top 26 proposals identified included a variety of grade level proposals as well as representation from all of the participating schools.  The proposals have now been forwarded to a seven-member SSEP Local Review Team which includes consulting engineers as well as representatives from GLOBALFOUNDRIES and Children’s Museum of Science and Technology (CMOST).  They will rank the proposals by November 17th based on a complete review of the information compiled and put forth by the students.

There was a flurry of last minute changes going on to a number of proposals today.  All of the proposals had to be submitted by noon today to be considered for submittal to the Local Review Team.  We received seventy proposals by the deadline.  We are now planning to go through the proposals to see if they comply with all of the design specifications and are complete.

A number of students have started submitting draft proposals using our district lab report template.  They requested that their proposals go through an initial review to see if they should complete the information on the national form.  There is a lot of great research and some fantastic ideas.

The fifth grade students at Milton Terrace South were offered the opportunity to participate in SSEP through an after-school enrichment program that began today.  Ten students signed up for the program.  They divided up into teams based on a topic they were interested in investigating.

All of the students in Malta 5th grade received information about SSEP today.  The topic that came up for many of the students was whether seeds would grow the same way in microgravity as they do on Earth.

Students in the Earth Science, Biology, Principal of Biomedical and Human Body Systems classes are all working on developing experiments for the Student Spaceflight Experiment Program.  The size of the experiment chamber and the limitation on what materials can be used is creating some challenges.  One cm by three mm is not very big.