Milton Keynes students will work with NASA astronauts in International Space Station experiment

Matthew Douse, Tom Scott and James Heathcote, from Shenley Brook End School, will see an experiment they designed blasting off to the International Space Station this week.

Their team beat more than 60 students from 20 schools to win ISSET’s Mission Discovery, a competition led by former NASA astronaut Dr Michael Foale and held at Cranfield University.

“It was great to have the opportunity to inspire young people to get involved in STEM” says Cranfield’s Dr. Paul Jones.

“We look forward to seeing the results of the experiment.”

The winning experiment, looking at how ionic fluids behave in micro-gravity, is being entirely automated and will return data to earth for the students to interpret on an almost live basis.

Matthew expressed his excitement and said: “It’s great that the experiment is going up and I’m looking forward to getting the data back and seeing the results - it’s really exciting.”

SpaceX-10 has given the launch date as February 18 at 10:01AM - the launch will be viewable on NASA TV.