Team Rocket Student Experiment In Orbit
The Team Rocket experiment from the Guardians of the Galaxy Space Station Challenge onboard the International Space Station shortly after the hatch to SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft was opened.
Media Credit: NASA
Adia Bulawa holds Rocket, the Guardians of the Galaxy Character that inspired her winning idea to test a UV-activated dental glue on the ISSInternational Space Station.
Media Credit: Adia Bulawa
This week, crew members onboard the International Space Station (ISS) installed the NanoRacks module containing the Team Rocket experiment from the Guardians of the Galaxy Space Station Challenge. The ISS National Lab partnered with Marvel Entertainment for the challenge, in which students from across the U.S. submitted concepts for spaceflight experiments based on the physical characteristics of Guardians of the Galaxy characters Rocket and Groot.
The winning Team Rocket project, led by student investigator Adia Bulawa from Greenville, Tennessee, is looking at the effectiveness 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. of a dental glue that is activated by ultraviolet light.
Read more about the Guardians of the Galaxy Space Station Challenge and the winning student experiments in this Space Station Explorers post.