Henrico students watch their experiments blast into space

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Some Henrico students watched in awe as their science experiments were launched into suborbital space on a NASA rocket at 5:30 a.m. June 23.

The small but mighty experiments were held in cubes no larger than two inches squared but were designed to measure more than 20 units of force and acceleration, typically referred to as g-forces.

For five years now, Technology and Engineering Design Teacher Peter Tlusky has brought NASA’s Cubes in Space program to middle and high school students at Saint Mary’s Catholic School and The Steward School in Henrico through an after-school program.

It all begins with an idea. Students are broken up into teams and brainstorm ideas for experiments that would test a real-world Earth or space-based need. After deciding on a concept, they draft a project proposal that is sent to the program operators for approval.

The competition is fierce, as thousands of students from across the globe submit proposals, but only 80 are selected for spaceflight. Despite the long odds, two of the 80 selected were proposed by students in Tlusky’s after-school program.

This year’s launch was unique because those scheduled for 2020 and 2021 had been canceled. As a result, the experiments launched this year were originally conceived in 2020, giving students two years to reimagine and tweak their original designs.

Both experiments used mechanical elements to exploit and measure the g-forces on the rocket. In addition to facing severe, massive forces upon launch and landing, the experiments face other extreme circumstances once they reach space, Tlusky said.

“As it gets up into space, it’s only there for a few minutes but there’s microgravity, there’s radiation and temperature swings,” he said. “Then the next biggest challenge is whatever that idea [for an experiment] is, you have to fit into a little four centimeter cube…it’s like less than 2 inches squared, it's small.”

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The first experiment attempted to protect one-centimeter shards of Christmas ornaments with four layers of different protective materials: thick foam, teddy bear stuffing, bubble wrap and cut-up foam.

The second sought to measure the g-forces through a design made of wound-up, copper-wire springs and fishing weights. The fishing weights were attached to the bottom of the wire springs, which were glued to the roof of the cube. The force would be measured by the extent that the weights pulled down the springs.

The first project was a total success, Tlusky said. The stuffing and dense foam protected the glass shards well, while the bubble wrap and cut up foam didn’t hold up as well.

The fishing weight experiment turned out alright, but didn’t pull down the springs as predicted, Tlusky said, adding that if the students were to do the project again, they would use heavier weights or thinner wire springs.

Tlusky’s students, several of whom watched the launch in-person, were thrilled by the whole experience, he said.

“When they saw the rocket go up and all the production and everything that NASA was doing, that’s when they realized ‘Wow this is something really really special,” he said.

A live stream of the launch can be found on NASA Wallops’ YouTube page.

Since its inception in 2014, the Cubes in Space program by iDoodleEDU incorporated has flown more than 1,000 experiments representing more than 2,300 educators and 22,000 students from 75 countries, according to its website. In addition to flying 80 experiments annually on the rocket, 120 experiments are launched on a scientific balloon later in the summer.

Tlusky’s students were asked to participate in the balloon launch, which presents even greater challenges because the experiments stay in space for longer, resulting in increased radiation levels and temperatures as low as -300 degrees fahrenheit, he said. Those experiments will be launched from NASA’s Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility.