Florida Tech has signed on as a participating community for Mission 20 of the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program, which means that Florida Tech students now have the exciting opportunity to develop a scientific experiment that could be selected to fly to space and be conducted on board the International Space Station (ISS).

The design competition – from program start, through experiment design, to submission of proposals by student teams – spans 9 weeks from January 6 to March 10, 2025. Interested? Form your team and get started now!

In brief, Florida Tech student teams are invited to submit a 5-page research experiment proposal for review by an internal committee. From that group, three projects will be selected for review by a SSEP review board. Then, one team's project will be chosen and their project will fly to the ISS in Fall 2025.

Experiments must be kept simple, limited to the addition of liquids from two tubes, at different times, into a single tube. Projects are not limited to biology research and any project that be conducted within program parameters will be considered. This is a great opportunity to learn experimental design, scientific communication, and the challenges of performing research in space.

Student teams can arise out of faculty research groups/labs or be independent and will be assigned a faculty advisor/mentor.

Review the resources listed for more information about this exciting opportunity or contact Dr. Palmer for more details.

The Student Space Flight 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.