How to Participate

Before reading this page, make sure to first read the SSEP Home page, and then the About SSEP page.

November 15, 2011: The National Center for Earth and Space Science Education (NCESSE) announces an immediate opportunity for communities across the U.S. to participate in the second Student Spaceflight Experiments Program (SSEP) mission to America’s National Laboratory in space—the International Space Station (ISS). Reflecting International Space Station operations, Mission 2 is also available, on a limited basis, to communities internationally. 

Mission 2 to ISS provides for an experiment design competition March through May 2012, and ferry flights to and from ISS for selected flight experiments in September and November 2012.

NCESSE stands ready to help interested communities in the U.S. in identifying needed funding.

Participating communities must be aboard by February 27, 2012. Program operations in all communities begin no later than March 5, 2012. Critical milestones are provided below.  

All interested communities are urged to contact NCESSE as soon as possible to explore participation in Mission 2 to ISS.   

 

The International Space Station (ISS) with Endeavour (STS-135) docked. 16 SSEP Experiments are aboard. ISS dwarfs Endeavour. CLICK FOR ZOOM

Each participating community will be provided all launch services to fly a real microgravity research mini-laboratory on the International Space Station (ISS) from September 28 to November 12, 2012, and a kit for assembly of their mini-lab. An experiment design competition in each community—engaging typically 300 to 1,000 students—allows student teams to design real microgravity experiments vying for their community’s reserved mini-lab slot on ISS. Additional SSEP programming leverages the flight design competition to engage the community, embracing NCESSE’s Learning Community Model for STEM education.

SSEP Mission 2 to ISS is currently the only SSEP flight opportunity available.

Through SSEP missions on STS-134 (Shuttle Endeavour) and STS-135 (Shuttle Atlantis), 977 student team proposals were received and 27 experiments were selected and flown—one for each of the 27 participating communities. Through SSEP Mission 1 to ISS, the third SSEP flight opportunity, 779 proposals were received and 15 experiments were selected to fly representing the 12 participating communities.

Mission 2 participation is open to the following five categories of communities:

  • Pre-College (the core focus for SSEP) in the U.S., (grades 5-12), with a participating school district—even an individual school—providing a stunning, real, on-orbit RESEARCH opportunity to their upper elementary, middle, and high school students
  • 2-Year Community Colleges in the U.S., (grades 13-14), where the student body is typically from the local community, providing wonderful pathways for community-wide engagement
  • 4-Year Colleges and Universities in the U.S., (grades 13-16), with an emphasis on Minority-Serving Institutions, where the program fosters interdisciplinary collaboration across schools and departments, and an opportunity for formal workforce development for science majors
  • Communities in the U.S. led by Informal Education or Out-of-School Organizations, (e.g., a museum or science center, a homeschool network, a boy scout troop), because high caliber STEM education programs must be accessible to organizations that promote effective learning beyond the traditional classroom
  • Communities Internationally: in European Space Agency (ESA) member nations, European Union (EU) member nations, Canada, and Japan, with participation through NCESSE’s Arthur C. Clarke Institute for Space Education

For a good background on SSEP, and to introduce the opportunity to key individuals in your community, WATCH THIS SSEP VIDEO at STEMStream TV by Dr. Jeff Goldstein, SSEP Program Director, and Center Director for the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education.


Critical elements associated with the SSEP Mission 2 to ISS flight opportunity—

1. Time Available for Experiment Design: Your Student Teams, together with their Teacher Facilitators, will have at least 8 weeks (March 5 to April 30, 2012) to: begin the program in classrooms across your community, design experiments, and write and submit 5-page proposals, with proposals due by April 30, 2012. It may be possible to extend the experiment design phase to 12 weeks with an earlier program start.

Note that NCESSE has a significant number of resources that make this process straight-forward, including an instructionally designed recipe allowing teachers to easily facilitate: introduction of the program in the classroom, experiment design, and proposal writing.

2. Finding Your Community Funding: We stand ready to aggressively help your community identify funders capable of a short turn-around, talk to funders on your behalf and/or in coordination with you, and help write any needed proposals. NCESSE rapidly found funding for 28 of 39 SSEP community programs undertaken as part of the first three SSEP flight opportunities, and we now have active relationships with a network of funders across the nation.

We have also assembled the following suite of resources for fundraising:

  • a bulleted list of powerful SSEP talking points that can be called upon when talking to a potential funder
  • extensive experience successfully talking to funders about SSEP on behalf of interested communities
  • databases of funders on a regional and local level, that allow us to rapidly do a search for appropriate funders
  • a proposal template with straight-forward sections that address a community’s demographics and strategic needs in STEM education. The template allows a proposal to be written and submitted to a funder (if needed) with no more than a 2-3 hour investment of time.

3. Letter of Commitment of Funding: All participating communities must submit Letters of Commitment of funding by February 27, 2012.

4. Contract: The deadline for signing a contract is March 16, 2012.

5. Other Key Milestones:

  • Experiments selected for flight: May 31, 2012
  • Ferry Flight of SSEP Payload to ISS Aboard Soyuz 32, launch date: September 26, 2012
  • Ferry Flight of SSEP Payload back to Earth Aboard Soyuz 31, landing: November 12, 2012
  • SSEP National Conference for students: early July 2013, most likely held at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, Washington, DC, the site of the 2011 National Conference

For a formal schedule with all milestone dates, go to the SSEP Mission 2 to ISS: Critical Timeline page

For more details on Mission 1 flight operations, go to the SSEP Mission 2 to the International Space Station page

6. Getting Your Community Interested and Aboard: We offer teleconferences and video-conferences as needed to introduce the program to your key community leadership (e.g., school and district leadership), and to the Local Team of educators that you would charge with carrying out the program. Conference call objectives: provide a overview of the program to your team, answer any questions, and help you explore tailoring the program to your community’s strategic need in STEM education. This will provide your team the ability to rapidly assess if you’d like to participate in SSEP. These conference calls have been exceedingly successful in getting the communities aboard that participated in the first three SSEP flight opportunities.

To gauge program success, see the following pages:

Download a 3-Page SSEP Program Overview. This is a MS Word document appropriate for emailing to colleagues, or for print distribution. If this MS Word document is opened on screen, all the links to relevant content on SSEP web pages will be active, and you can click on a link as needed to see the web content in the appropriate context.


YOUR NEXT STEPS

We have a limited number of mini-laboratory slots available for SSEP Mission 2 to ISS, and urge interested communities to call or email, ASAP, Dr. Jeff Goldstein, SSEP Program Director, and Center Director for the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education. Contact information may be found on the Contact page. Dr. Goldstein will set up a phone call with you to explore whether this program makes sense for your community, and how we can help get you aboard.

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The Student Space Flight Experiments Program [or SSEP] is undertaken by the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education (NCESSE), a project of the 501(c)(3) Tides Center, in partnership with NanoRacks, LLC. This on-orbit educational research opportunity is enabled through NanoRacks, LLC, which is working in partnership with NASA under a Space Act Agreement as part of the utilization of the International Space Station as a National Laboratory.