Experiments in Weightlessness Designed by Students

Safer spacesuits is the goal of experiments in weightlessness designed by students that will be aboard the International Space Station next year.

50 students at Ventura Missionary school and 20 students at Oaks Christian Middle School in Westlake Village will participate in the Quest Institute’s International Space Station program as they design experiments in their classrooms to be tested aboard the space station next year. The experiments will be performed in the microgravity chamber, a weightless area of the space station.

“We are working on an experiment that tests absorption of heat between light surfaces and dark surfaces,” said Ventura Missionary science teacher Alane Woods. “The information will end up with NASA so they can use it to create safer spacesuits.”

The students are programming Lego Mindstorms EV3 robots to perform the experiment in space.

“This program really taps into the whole gamut of STEM applications — science, technology, engineering, math and also robotics,” said Tammy Ennis, Ventura Missionary’s dean of academics.