Nickelodeon’s Slime in Space Takes Off
May 5, 2020 • By Patrick O'Neill, Staff Writer
This past weekend, Nickelodeon aired its annual Kids’ Choice Awards, famous over the years for “sliming” its many celebrity guests and award winners. If you know anything about Nickelodeon and its long history of gameshow television programs, you know that they love slime! However, if you were one of the millions of viewers that watched the Kids’ Choice Awards on Saturday night, you may have noticed that slime went somewhere it had never gone before—to the International Space Station (ISSInternational Space Station)!
In a collaboration with the ISS U.S. National Laboratory and Nickelodeon, multiple packages of iconic green slime launched to the orbiting laboratory last year…but why? Slime is a non-Newtonian fluid, which is more viscous (resistant to flow) than other fluids like water, making it very interesting to study in microgravityThe condition of perceived weightlessness created when an object is in free fall, for example when an object is in orbital motion. Microgravity alters many observable phenomena within the physical and life sciences, allowing scientists to study things in ways not possible on Earth. The International Space Station provides access to a persistent microgravity environment..
NASANational Aeronautics and Space Administration and its international partners have a long history of testing water and other fluids in space, but this was a unique opportunity to test a viscous fluid like slime on the ISS National Lab. Perhaps more importantly, it was also a valuable educational opportunity to engage and excite the next generation of explorers while demonstrating how fluids behave in space compared with their behavior in normal Earth-based environments!
Not only was Slime in Space featured on the Kids’ Choice Awards, but Nickelodeon also developed an in-depth educational video, “Nickelodeon Slime in Space: A Virtual Field Trip,” that highlights some of the demonstrations done by NASA astronaut Christina Koch and European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano on the space station. The video also shows students doing the same demonstrations on Earth for comparison—all with the fun and educational tone that Nickelodeon typically provides through its programs to engage young kids.
The Virtual Field Trip also includes a few guest celebrities as they attempt to answer the ultimate question—what happens to slime in space? Moreover, what happens when you try to slime an astronaut in space? The answers might surprise you—they certainly surprised the astronauts who interacted with the slime in space! So sit back, relax, and enjoy learning about Slime in Space through Nickelodeon’s Virtual Field Trip!