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Experiment from Newport News high schoolers selected for NASA mission

Posted at 1:40 PM, Apr 26, 2016
and last updated 2016-04-26 13:40:11-04

Newport News, Va. – A group of high school students from An Achievable Dream High School and Heritage High School in Newport News was notified on Tuesday that their ‘Cubes in Space’ project will be launched into space in June.

The ‘Cubes in Space’ project is an Idoodlelearning Inc. program presented in cooperation with NASA Langley Research Center and the Colorado Space Consortium that gives students the opportunity to design an experiment to be launched into space in a small cube.

During the competitive application process, students must prepare design narratives, make diagrams, conduct research and submit planning proposals.

The Newport News students’ design was a first-round pick.

The cubes will be sent to NASA where they will fly on Sounding Rocket-3 from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility on the Eastern Shore. The rocket will operate at 20g’s, significantly more force exerted then a manned space flight. It will leave Earth’s atmosphere and orbit in space for a short duration before returning to Earth and crash landing in the Atlantic Ocean.

The payloads will then be returned to Heritage High School for the students to complete a final narrative about their experimental design and the results after completing their observations.