ADNET helps local public schools participate in the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program (SSEP)

ADNET Systems, Inc. committed to support local public schools in Maryland and Washington, D.C., to participate in the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program (SSEP) as part of the U.S. national Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education initiative that gives around 300 pre-college students across a community the ability to design and propose real experiments to fly in low Earth orbit on the International Space Station (ISS). Students in the Howard County Public School System (HCPSS) in Maryland and the Cesar Chavez Public Charter Schools in Washington, D.C., submit designs and proposals as part of a local Flight Experiment Design Competition for Mission 5 to ISS.

“ADNET is excited to help fuel local students’ dreams in science, technology, engineering and math opportunities through the exceptional Student Spaceflight Experiments Program,” said ADNET CEO Ashok Jha. “For more than a decade, ADNET has both created and supported numerous educational and professional opportunities for students nationwide, and particularly in the Washington, D.C., area, to gain hands-on experience in pursuit of their goals. We look forward to seeing these students compete in this program and fulfill the technological challenges of the future.”

ADNET’s pledge to both the HCPSS and Cesar Chavez Public Charter Schools will be put towards the fund-raising requirement for the design and proposal process, which lasts a minimum of nine weeks. This will be HCPSS’s second flight opportunity. Their first was the SSEP Mission 3 to ISS during the 2012-13 school year. Three HCPSS middle schools participated in the Mission 3 opportunity, with a total of 530 8th graders fully immersed in experiment design, and 129 proposals for microgravity flight experiments received from their student teams. Their Mission 3 flight experiment was selected in December 2012, and is scheduled to launch to ISS on the D-1 Cygnus vehicle, launching September 14, 2013, from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, VA. Their Mission 3 flight opportunity proved to be such a remarkable immersion in authentic STEM research that HCPSS wants to participate in Mission 5 for another 550 grade 8 students, and sustain the program and momentum.