Lummi: Students reflect on project that recently returned from space

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“[ e kids] started pulling it apart and seeing there wasn’t any great di erence. We also had a controlled experiment right here on the ground,” Brandt said.

“So, they duplicated the exact same thing that went up to space here on the ground [with] conditions as similar as possible.”

Brandt admits with a laugh that he was underwhelmed by the results. Both the controlled experiment and the experiment on the space station yielded similar results with the plant “barely sprouting.”

But Brandt and his crew of students were excited, nonetheless.

“I’m proud just to get it up there,” Solomon said.

Cline added that he didn’t expect a huge sprout, but had hoped for more like Brandt.

On top of being able to say he was part of creating a project that was sent into space, Cline can add to the list getting to speak in real time with an astronaut on the ISS. Cline was invited to the University of Washington on Feb. 10 for a video call with the astronaut who helped with their experiment. Brandt said Cline got to ask the astronaut a question.

When asked about the experience, Cline explains that he wishes he had asked a di erent question. As the group’s creative writer, he would have liked to ask, “something more philosophical.” He had been given one to ask by the team for the sake of inclusion and time.

While the talk with the astronaut was only for some of the students, the entire group of nine students involved with the project were able to travel to Florida to experience the Space Kennedy Center in June of 2022 along with ve chaperones.

It’s an experience that the students seem almost equally excited about as the fact they created something that went into space. And it’s easy to understand why. For many students it was their rst time traveling so far away, experiencing a sense of independence and freedom.

“I thought it was really fun. At rst I was like, I don’t want to go somewhere with my classmates for that long, but it was actually pretty fun,” Pantalia said. “We got to do a lot. We weren’t speci cally there just to be there for school. ey also let us go to the beach and do all sorts of stu .”

-- Contact Sarah McCauley at sarah@lyndentribune. com.

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