Bay Ridge
This really is big news. Students at the Mary White Ovington School (PS-IS 30) in Bay Ridge are going to the Space Station — at least their experiment is.
Mike Massimino, former NASA astronaut and senior advisor for space programs at the Intrepid Museum, made the announcement during a ceremony at the museum.
“It’s great to see these students connect to and engage in science through this extraordinary opportunity,” he said.
Dana Ahmad, Sundous Aljahmi, Joshua Feliciano, Jiahao Guan, and Joyce Wong won the first-ever Intrepid International Space Station Challenge. The team’s experiment was hand-picked from 205 New York City public school students to go where no school science experiment has gone before — to the International Space Station in the fall on Student Spaceflight Experiments Program’s Mission 8, where an astronaut will conduct the experiment.
The program, sponsored by the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum, in partnership with the SSEP and the Ramon Foundation, charged students to design and create an experiment that explores how microgravity affects the germination of pot mum seeds.
“This has been an amazing experience for my students and me,” said science teacher Nathan Tubbs. “To know that they have an opportunity to see their experiment fly into space, has engaged them in a way other projects have not.”
“I think it’s really cool that we got chosen because this is a big opportunity,” added winning team member Sundous Aljahmi. “All of our families are really proud of us.”
Standing O is really proud of the students, too!
PS-IS 30 Mary White Ovington [7002 Fourth Ave. at 70th Street in Bay Ridge, (718) 491–8440].
