Shuttle will carry CU-designed experiment for kids
Jim Erickson, Rocky Mountain News
Published December 6, 2006 at midnight
With the help of University of Colorado engineers, two biology experiments designed for school children will ride into space Thursday aboard the space shuttle Discovery.
A seed-germination experiment and one about worm development will fly inside a suitcase-size container built by BioServe Space Technologies, a NASA-funded center based at CU’s aerospace engineering sciences department.
BioServe will downlink video, still images and data from the two experiments. The materials will be distributed to about 1,000 elementary, middle and high school students in the United States and abroad.
"This is an exciting project for BioServe and a great opportunity to engage K-12 students in space research," said BioServe Director Louis Stodieck.
BioServe is working with two partners: North Carolina State University and Orion’s Quest, a Web-based educational program.
Some students will track the effects of near-zero gravity on the germination of radish and alfalfa seeds. The space seeds sprout in a translucent, gel-like material that will allow students to chart root and stem growth.
They will compare the space seeds’ response to the growth of seeds sprouting simultaneously in their own schools.
Other students will monitor eyelash-size roundworms, studying population dynamics, physiology, daily movements and gene activity.
The seeds and worms will fly in BioServe’s Commercial Generic Bioprocessing Apparatus, a container that has been used to carry out dozens of life sciences experiments in space. The two experiments will be transferred from Discovery to the International Space Station.
ericksonj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5129.
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