Students send experiments
to space on suborbital flight
cylinders for insertion into
the rocket at Spaceport
Gasps, whistles, and cheers
America. A credit-card-size
burst from 300 observers as the
opening in the side of each
SpaceLoft 7 rocket blasted
canister provided access
into the sky from Spaceport
so the students could inject
America in southern New
the liquid and gel growth
Mexico. Among the crowd
mediums
through
tube
were 60 students, ranging
systems they had designed.
from middle school through
At eight o’clock the
university level, who watched
morning of June 21, 2013,
the rocket carry experiments
the 20-foot-long SpaceLoft
they had designed and built.
7 (SL-7) rocket shot off the
“That feeling of seeing
launching pad, reaching
something you built fly up
a speed of Mach 5 (about
into space is incredible,”
3,800 miles an hour) on its
said 13-year-old Emerson
way to an altitude of 74
Schoeppner.
He
and
miles—a record for both UP
other students at Camino
Aerospace and Spaceport
Real Middle School and
America. The experiments it
La Academia de Dolores
carried experienced 17 g’s
Huerta Middle School, both
of force and four minutes
in Las Cruces, New Mexico,
of microgravity. At the end
developed
experiments
of its 15-minute flight, the
using algae.
rocket’s payload section
“Students were asked to
parachuted to the ground
propose experiments using
23 miles from the launch
algae because NASA is
pad, at its \