Press Release
LCO Ojibwe School
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 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. The LCO College Review Board included:
Team 1: Dr. Debra Anderson, Science Faculty; Pauline Biscobing, student, AISES member; and Talyn Marlow, student, AISES member
Team 2: Amber Marlow, Dean Continuing Ed & Custom Training, AISES advisor; and Russell Corbine, student, AISES member
Team 3: Sue Menzel, Sustainable Ag Research Manager, AISES advisor; Gary Franciewicz, Mathematics Faculty; and Leatha Shores, student, AISES member
Sue Menzel said, “We have all at one time or another wanted to go into outer space; with this experiment designed by our youth, we are!”
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.
The Student Spaceflight Experiments Program [or SSEP] is a program of the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education (NCESSE) in the U.S. and the Arthur C. Clarke Institute for Space Education internationally. It is enabled through a strategic partnership with DreamUp PBC and NanoRacks LLC, which are working with NASA under a Space Act Agreement as part of the utilization of the International Space Station as a National Laboratory.
Finalist team Davion Neweiashe, Neah Billyboy, Kylie Dishaw, Raini Kingfisher. Not pictured Emma Revak.
Finalist team L-R Aubrey Conger, Savanah Larson, Hailey Banuchie, Cali Perry