The Re-Flight of Yankee Clipper – the SSEP Mission 6 to ISS Student Experiments Lost Aboard Orb-3: Media Package

Media Contact:
Jeff Goldstein, jeffgoldstein@ncesse.org, cell: 301-395-0770

 

This pages provides supporting information for the re-flight of the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program (SSEP) Yankee Clipper payload of student experiments. Yankee Clipper represents the culmination of SSEP’s 8th flight opportunity – Mission 6 to ISS. The Yankee Clipper payload of experiments was lost with Orb-3.

Mission 6 Historical Data: The 18 experiments flying as the SSEP Yankee Clipper payload reflect the 18 communities participating in Mission 6 to ISS. Program operations in all communities began on February 24, 2014. Microgravity experiment design and proposal writing was conducted over the course of 9 weeks, February 24 through April 28, 2014. Across the communities, a total of 6,860 grade 5-15 students were fully engaged in microgravity experiments design and 1,487 proposals were received from student teams. The selected flight experiment for each community was determined by the SSEP National Step 2 Review Board that met at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum on May 20 and 21, 2014. In the intervening months, all flight experiments underwent NASA Flight Safety Review and passed, flight experiment teams continued to optimize their experiments, and experiment lock-in for flight configuration occurred on August 1, 2014. Flight experiments arrived at NanoRacks in Houston by September 26, 2014, for payload integration into the Yankee Clipper payload. The payload boxes were then handed over to NASA for integration into the Orb-3 Cygnus vehicle SS Deke Slayton.

Yankee Clipper was aboard Orb-3 on October 28, 2014, when the vehicle was destroyed on launch. A compelling account of that experience shared by 130 SSEP delegates at the launch site, and the activities that led to re-flight of the new Yankee Clipper II payload on SpaceX-5, are detailed in the following Blog post. 17 of 18 experiments are being re-flown on Space-5, launching December 16, 2014, just 1.5 months after the loss of Orb-3. The experiment from North Charleston, SC, will fly with the Mission 7 Odyssey payload in Spring 2015.

12/8/14 SSEP National Blog Post on the Loss of the Yankee Clipper experiments on Orb-3, a personal account:
http://ssep.ncesse.org/2014/12/the-loss-of-orb-3-and-ssep-yankee-clipper-failure-happens-what-we-do-in-the-face-of-failure-is-what-defines-us/

 

NASA Pre-Flight Science Briefing for Orb-3, Wallops Flight Facility
The link immediately below is to the NASA Pre-Flight Science Briefing for the Orb-3 launch, which was covered live on NASA TV on October 26, 2014. Dr. Jeff Goldstein, Center Director, National Center for Earth and Space Science Education and creator of SSEP, is one of the panelists. He provides an overview of SSEP, and showcases a number of student experiments on Mission 6:
http://youtu.be/r-A52OhSvw8?list=UULA_DiR1FfKNvjuUpBHmylQ

 

MEDIA PACKAGE Downloadable Documents (PDFs)
SSEP National Program Overview for Congressional Briefings on Capitol Hill
Mission 6 to ISS Profile
Mission 6 Flight Experiments Summary Table
Mission 6 Flight Experiments: Research Teams and Experiment Summaries
NCESSE Official Response to Sen. Tom Coburn

 

Email addresses for the SSEP leadership in each of the Mission 6 communities can be found on this page:
http://ssep.ncesse.org/communities/community-directory/community-profiles-and-local-partners-ssep-mission-6-to-iss/

 

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.