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Student Spaceflight Experiments Program gives Ohio University students a chance to reach for the stars
Gabriel Scotto APG Media
A team of Ohio University students has designed an experiment that will be sent to the International Space Station.
Undergraduate students Lara Fogwell and Cat Gavin, along with recent Ohio University graduate Jake Magula, conducted research investigating the effects of spaceflight on watercress germination, attempting to see how the plant would grow in microgravity.
“By examining watercress germinated and grown both on the ISS and here on Earth, we hope to see whether this plant could prove to be a viable option as a food source for astronauts in the future,” Fogwell explained.
Fogwell, Gavin, and Magula’s experiment was one of 21 selected for the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program Mission 19 to the International Space Station.
The Student Spaceflight Experiments Program is a creation of the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education, which creates and oversees national science education programs focused on Earth and space science.
According to the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program, 9,800 students from grades 5-12 and university undergraduates were expected to participate. In addition to students from the United States, students from Canada, Ukraine, Portugal, and Brazil also participated.
“Not only does SSEP provide an accessible opportunity for students to conduct space science, but it also equips students with resources and the space to design their unique projects,” Teacher Facilitator Remington N. Burwell said. “I hope that SSEP is here to stay so more students can have the amazing opportunity to say they personally designed an experiment and had it flown in space.”
At present, Ohio University and Kent State are the only two universities in Ohio that participate in the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program.
Sarah Wyatt, a professor of environmental plant biology at Ohio University, is director of the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program at OU.
“We have students from all across campus. They’re not just scientists. We have students from engineering and business and English and from all across campus,” Wyatt said. “They work in teams. We divide them up into teams and they have a (graduate student) facilitator. We typically have 10 teams.”
Wyatt’s interest in space exploration began when she was a child. Wyatt grew up watching episodes of the cult science fiction show “Star Trek” and decided she wanted to become an astronaut after her 11th birthday, when NASA landed a man on the moon.
While Wyatt didn’t grow up to become an astronaut, she became involved with NASA during the mid-1990s and has sent five experiments to the International Space Station. Wyatt first became aware of the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program through a student, before then-provost Elizabeth Sayrs reached out to Wyatt and asked if she would be interested in overseeing the program.
“I wrote a proposal to (the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education) detailing all the material that they wanted to know and they accepted us into the program,” Wyatt explained. “Then I started rounding up colleagues to help me.”
One of the people Wyatt got involved in the program was Corey Beck, a theoretical chemist and assistant professor at Ohio University. Beck, who previously worked as a rocket fuels chemist at Vanderberg Space Force Base in Santa Barbara County, California, serves as outreach coordinator for the program.
In his capacity as outreach coordinator, Beck was responsible for the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program Patch Design Competition, which is a collaboration between the Ohio Valley Museum of Discovery and the Ohio University Student Spaceflights Experiment Program.
Beck says his goal as outreach coordinator is to grow the program at Ohio University and engage and collaborate more with other universities and organizations. He also encourages the community to stay involved and support the program’s efforts to inspire the next generation of scientists.
“I want to help build out the outreach, because it is important to talk to the kids at a young age. If we can get them at a young age to do the patch design, then when they’re in high school, they can become the judges. When they’re in college, they can be in the program,” Beck said. “We’ve got a nice pipeline for keeping the students in the sciences and, with this program, all the way from kindergarten through college.”
Nathan Smith, an Ohio University senior majoring in field ecology, was part of a team of OU students that designed an experiment for the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program Mission 18 to the International Space Station last year. Smith recommends the program to OU students for its resume-building experience and real-world applications. He advises students who are interested to be open to new ideas, to show up and put in the effort to succeed in the program.
“It’s a good resume-building experience, along with having to be put in a real-world situation where you have strict deadlines and you’re not going to get that from a regular class. You might have to give a presentation in a normal class, but those skills are not the same as what you’ll go through SSEP with,” Smith said.
About SSEP
The Student Spaceflight Experiments Program [or just “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 Nanoracks, LLC, which is working with NASA under a Space Act Agreement as part of the utilization of the International Space Station as a National Laboratory.
