Reaching Out to Students

We initiated an outreach program to complement our flight experiments, which was fantastic to be involved in. The program engaged the educational community, taking the science that was being conducted by the university community and bringing it to the lowest (educational) levels, i.e., the elementary grades. We found ways to excite the students and involve them in the SLS II mission in 1993. We had experiments that studied the effects of calcium loss in the bones of rodents during spaceflight. We had classes study plant growth in a variety of calcium solutions. It was easier having the children use plants rather than rodents, and they quickly became involved with experimentation, the scientific method, understanding and creating a hypothesis, and how experiments are setup to address hypotheses.

The students conducted their own experiments, made measurements in parallel with the mission and met the scientists and astronauts shortly after the flight. The student involvement was a rewarding experience not only for the scientific investigators on the mission but, more importantly, for the students and teachers. We've been perpetuating that type of involvement ever since.