Year 8 STEM students from the school entered the Cubes in SpaceTM, a program by idoodledu inc. competition in 2017. They recently learned that their Cubes in Space experiments were heading out of this world. 

Cubes in SpaceTM is the only global competition, offered at no cost, for students 11-18 years of age to design and propose experiments to launch into space, or a near space environment, on a NASA sounding rocket and zero-pressure scientific balloon.

idoodledu inc. is an educational non-profit organisation that helps students embrace their curiosity and imagination while experiencing the joy of discovering and learning something new while oferring opportunities to develop logical, methodical and creative solutions to problems.

Last year the balloom flight was cancelled, but two little cubed experiments by the Bowral students, named Blu Tac and Pinto Beans, are this year set to fly.

Blu Tac​ has been developed by Ocatia Ison, Lily Everingham, Braelyn Horvath, Rhianna Gattringer, and Sanya Chodaha and Pinto Beans​ is the work of Jakob Simpson, Stephen Burg, Brendan Vincent, Thomas Cayzer, Conner Gill and Bohdan Saffioti. 

Head teacher Tim Flaus said ​the cubes contained student-designed experiments.

“In the Pinto Beans experiment students are investigating how possible future food sources for long-term space travel will survive the rigours of space flight,” he said.

“They will be testing how the conditions of space, such as high radiation and low gravity will affect the germination of Pinto Beans.

“The Blu Tac investigation will test the effectiveness of Blu-tac as an adhesive for holding notes, instructions and various other items for astronauts when exposed to space travel.” ​

The Cubes in Space Research Balloon-4 (RB-4/RB-3) Mission would fly 120 student experiments, of which 54 were from the RB-3 mission that was cancelled last year.

The RB-4 experiments will fly as a secondary payload on NASA’s Balloon Program Office test flight SIFT mission from NASA’s Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility (CSBF) in Fort Sumner, New Mexico.

The beginning of the launch window is August 24, which is the first day the balloon can launch.

The primary goal of the mission is to test a NASA-developed rotator that could be used on their large super-pressure balloons that launch from the Antarctic.

The little cubed experiments will fly on a 29 mission cubic foot helium balloon to a target altitude of at least 120,000 feet (36.5 km) at which it will experience near-space conditions.

Minimum success criteria for NASA’s mission is to be at the target altitude for four hours, but they are hoping to get four hours of daylight and four hours at night for the mission.

Under ideal conditions, the experiments could be exposed to the near-space environment for at least 8 hours with a total flight duration of at least 12 hours.

The balloon could land in Arizona, New Mexico or Texas. The farther away it lands, the longer it takes for the ground crew to drive to retrieve it.

Following retrieval the cubes will be sent back to NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia for processing and the return to relevant participants such at Bowral High students.

For more information about Cubes in Space visit www.cubesinspace.com