Student Spaceflight Experiments Program (SSEP) activity underway on the ISS

The Student Spaceflight Experiments Program (SSEP) is described as follows:

The Student Spaceflight Experiments Program (SSEP) was launched in June 2010 by the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education (NCESSE) in strategic partnership with NanoRacks, LLC. Designed as a model U.S. national Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education initiative, the program gives typically 300+ students across a participating community the ability to design and propose real microgravity experiments to fly in low Earth orbit, first aboard the final flights of the Space Shuttle, and then on the International Space Station (ISS) – America’s newest National Laboratory. SSEP is suitable for students in pre-college grades 5-12, 2-year community colleges, and 4-year colleges and universities. SSEP also affords a participating community a high level of media exposure at a time when STEM education is of national strategic importance.

In 2012, SSEP was extended to international communities through the Arthur C. Clarke Institute for Space Education, NCESSE’s new international arm.

SSEP is about immersing and engaging students and their teachers in every facet of real science—on the high frontier—so that students are given the chance to be scientists—and experience science firsthand.

This report includes videos  showing ISS astronaut  Koichi Wakata starting and stopping SSEP experiments  recently delivered to the station : VIDEOS: Astronaut Koichi Wakata Activating SSEP Mission 3b/4 Experiments on ISS – SSEP

These are video records of on-orbit activations, de-activations and other interactions associated with the SSEP Mission 3b and Mission 4 experiments by assigned astronaut Koichi Wakata (Japan). The videos were taken on the two (of six) scheduled SSEP Crew Interaction Days that have thus far taken place since the Cygnus spacecraft berthed at ISS on January 12, 2014, with the SSEP Mission 3b Falcon II and Mission 4 Orion experiment payloads.

Koichi’s activities are reported to all student flight teams via the SSEP Mission 4 and 3b to ISS: Experiments Log page, so that flight teams can mirror all activities in their vital ground truth experiments.

The next scheduled crew interaction with the experiment payloads is to take place on the third scheduled Crew Interaction Day, January 30, 2014 (Crew Interaction Day A+17). You can see the list of all expected January 30 crew interactions on the Experiment Log page.