Teacher and Student Resources

Last update to this page: February 6, 2023, 9:54 am ET – Mission 18 added

To assist student proposers and their Teacher Facilitators, we have assembled the suite of resources listed below.


1. Technical Assistance

Technical assistance is available to all teachers and student teams throughout the experimental design process, to help with an understanding of the design constraints imposed by the research mini-laboratory to be used, the flight timeline, and the on-orbit protocols for conducting the experiment; and to address any general flight experiment questions and concerns.

If a teacher or student team has a question, we need it submitted in writing using the Contact button (see the Navigation banner at the top of this page). The question will automatically be sent to the SSEP Flight Operations Team.


2. This Website

We have designed this website to be a comprehensive, online, easy to read environment with full details of the Student Space Flight Experiments Program. Listed below are links to the important pages at this website for Student Teams and their Teacher Facilitators concerning the experiment design competition and details concerning the process of experiment design and mini-laboratory operation:

Visit the Flight Experiment Design Competition page for a good understanding of how the experiment design competition would work in your community, and an overview of the proposal submission process.

Visit the Designing the Flight Experiment page for a great overview of how to think about framing an SSEP experiment.

For the SSEP Mission 18 to ISS Flight Opportunity, visit the SSEP Mission 18 to ISS page, which provides a Mission overview, and be sure to visit it’s important sub-pages:

SSEP Mission 18 to ISS: Critical Timeline, providing important milestones and due dates

SSEP Mission 18 to ISS: Mini-Laboratory Operation, providing operating details and specifications for this easy-to-use min-lab, and important experiment design constraints

For the SSEP Mission 17 to ISS Flight Opportunity, visit the SSEP Mission 17 to ISS page, which provides a Mission overview, and be sure to visit it’s important sub-pages:

SSEP Mission 17 to ISS: Critical Timeline, providing important milestones and due dates

SSEP Mission 17 to ISS: Mini-Laboratory Operation, providing operating details and specifications for this easy-to-use min-lab, and important experiment design constraints

For the SSEP Mission 16 to ISS Flight Opportunity, visit the SSEP Mission 16 to ISS page, which provides a Mission overview, and be sure to visit it’s important sub-pages:

SSEP Mission 16A to ISS: Critical Timeline, providing important milestones and due dates

SSEP Mission 16B to ISS: Critical Timeline, providing important milestones and due dates

SSEP Mission 16 to ISS: Mini-Laboratory Operation, providing operating details and specifications for this easy-to-use min-lab, and important experiment design constraints


3. The SSEP Document Library, and the Student Proposers Resource Library

The Document Library provides SSEP participating communities all the documents necessary to conduct the SSEP. All documents referred to throughout this website, as well as additional resource documents, are found here. This Library serves as a single download point for all documents, and provides a description for each.

The Documents Library also includes the Student Proposers Resource Library containing important information on the science of microgravity, case studies of microgravity experiments in the mini-lab to be used, and proposal requirements to help guide student proposers on experimental design, proposal submission, and experiment samples submission.

Jump to: Document Library


4. To Teachers—How to Move Forward

This is a wonderful resource for getting teachers up to speed on the Student Spaceflight Experiment Program in a straightforward way, and getting their students moving on experiment design. On this page you will find a step-by-step recipe for engagement in the classroom using the resources on this SSEP website.

Jump to: To Teachers—How to Move Forward page


5. FAQ

We have set up two separate types of FAQs for SSEP, both of which are updated as questions are received by the SSEP Team. The SSEP Program FAQ addresses general program questions, while the SSEP Experiment Design FAQs address questions specifically regarding experiment design, the flight hardware to be used, and the experiment design constraints.

Jump to: FAQ main page

 

The Student Spaceflight Experiments Program (SSEP) is a program of the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education (NCESSE) in the U.S., and the Arthur C. Clarke Institute for Space Education internationally. It is enabled through a strategic partnership with DreamUp PBC and NanoRacks LLC, which are working with NASA under a Space Act Agreement as part of the utilization of the International Space Station as a National Laboratory. SSEP is the first pre-college STEM education program that is both a U.S. national initiative and implemented as an on-orbit commercial space venture.