Murray Hill Student Experiment to Fly on International Space Station

January 14th, 2014

A science experiment designed by Murray Hill Middle School eighth grader Kevin He has been selected to fly on the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program’s Mission 5 to the International Space Station. He is one of just 15 selected among thousands who submitted proposals nationwide.

He’s project, “Core-Shell Micro/Nanodisks: Microencapsulation in Two Dimensions Under Microgravity” focuses on microencapsulation in two dimensions under microgravity, attempting to see the effect of microgravity on the release of medicines from the capsules that contain them.

Students began learning about forces and motion in science classes in mid-September, and broke into teams to design research proposals for microgravity experiments. 450 eighth grade students from Lake Elkhorn, Murray Hill, and Burleigh Manor Middle Schools researched and wrote proposals during the first quarter of the school year. A total of 125 proposals were produced, and 9 were forwarded from the schools to a local review committee. The local review committee reviewed these and nominated three finalists to the National Review Panel. After careful review, He’s project was selected to represent the Howard County Public School System on the mission, expected to launch in this spring.

The Student Space Flight Experiments Program (http://ssep.ncesse.org) is undertaken by the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education (NCESSE; http://ncesse.org) 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.

The participation of HCPSS in the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program is made possible through the generous underwriting of the following: Maryland Space Grant Consortium; Science Systems and Applications, Inc.; Howard Tech Council; Bright Minds Foundation; Noblis; ADNET Systems, Inc., ai solutions; HCGI Hartford; ATK; and Zenyon.