Sokaogon Chippewa Community News
LCO Ojibwe School Student Team Experiment Selected for Flight to the International Space Station
Posted on: January 7, 2021
A student proposed project, “Fish Egg Development in Space” by 7th graders Evan Heath, Kane LaRonge, and Thomas White will fly onboard SSEP Mission 14 to the International Space Station in June.
Their project was chosen by the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program (SSEP) National Step 2 Review Board at the Goddard Visitor Center in Greenbelt, MD, from three finalist proposals from the Lac Courte Oreilles (LCO) and Waadookodaading project.
The runner up finalists were “Manoomin (Wild Rice) Germination in Microgravity” by the 10th grade team of Kylie Dishaw, Raini Kingfisher, Emma Revak, Neah Billyboy and Davion Neweiashe, and “Fermentation of Milk into Cheese in Microgravity” by Hailey Banuchie, Cali Perry, Savanah Larson and Aubrey Conger.
The LCO College partnered with the school to develop the Step 1 Review Board needed to evaluate the 31 student designed proposals from LCO and Waadookodaading students in grades 5-12. The teams used criteria from SSEP to choose the three finalists to forward on to the Step 2 Review Board.
LCO / Waadookodaading will be the first Tribal school, and only the second school in Wisconsin to ever participate in SSEP. The next step for the chosen project is a NASA flight safety review and experiment refinement with experts. The school will also host a mission patch design contest for the two mission patches that will be allowed to fly with the experiment.
This opportunity is made possible because of generous financial supporters including the Wisconsin Space Grant Consortium, Subaru, LCO Youth and Education Fund, and the LCO Tribal Governing Board.