At 12:37am EST Saturday morning, the Japanese space agency JAXA successfully launched their second space station resupply mission from Tanegashima Space Center. The H-2 Transfer Vehicle (or HTV-2) -- nicknamed Kounotori 2, which means "White Stork" -- blasted off atop a Japanese-made H-IIB rocket and is scheduled to dock with the orbiting outpost on Jan. 27.
Kounotori 2 is loaded with supplies for the crew, equipment and experiments. But there's one experiment that students at Valley Christian High School in San Jose, Calif., have a vested interest in.
In April 2010, during the shuttle Discovery STS-131 mission to the station, Discovery News reported on the installation of a new standardized miniature laboratory. Called NanoRacks, this laboratory system can hold up to 16 smaller CubeLabs. Each CubeLab can contain experiments built by different institutions or companies who want to make use of the space station's microgravity environment.
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This exciting project is being undertaken by Kentucky Space (a non-profit space research collaboration based in Kentucky) and the Houston-based company NanoRacks LLC.
The CubeLabs can be launched, easily plugged into the waiting NanoRack via USB cables and then returned to Earth once the experiment is complete. "They basically become 'plug and play' laboratories," Kris Kimel, President of Kentucky Space, told me last year.
Now the NanoRack system is installed, experiments can be sent up to the station encased inside individual CubeSats, and the students of Valley Christian High School have a CubeLab containing their very own experiment -- the first of its kind -- aboard the HTV-2 currently in orbit.
"Containing its own growing environment and monitoring system designed by students at Valley Christian, the two-unit CubeLab will record and relay data on plant growth in an effort to answer questions related to the effect of micro-gravity on the cultivation of plants in long duration space flight," Wayne Hall, Kentucky Space communications officer, wrote in a recent blog.
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The experiments were designed by the students and they've put 1,000 hours of their free time into the project. The experiment will record the growth of basil, marigold, and the Wisconsin fast plant during the CubeLab's stay on the space station, the results of which will help us understand how plants may be cultivated for long-duration spaceflight.
"We're looking to do a lot more of these kinds of projects, and in particular, to push research opportunities out into Kentucky High Schools through our brand new STEM SpaceLab program," Hall told me via email.
Now that the International Space Station is nearing completion, questions are buzzing about its usefulness to mankind. Well, as the NanoRack/CubeLab system has proven, through collaboration of non-profit organizations, companies, space agencies and institutions, useful space science isn't just carried out by governments with multi-billion dollar budgets, high school students can get in on the action too.
Watch the ABC news report on Valley Christian High School student's work:
Tags: Current Events, JAXA, Space Commercialization, Space Station, Space Technology
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