Houston, we have a student experiment going to space!!! Two HISD schools, Johnston Middle and Parker Elementary, compose one of only 12 communities nation-wide to be selected to participate in Mission One to the International Space Station (ISS) through the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program (SSEP.) One student experiment will be chosen from an anticipated field of over 400 completed scientific proposals from over 1,000 students. That experiment will fly to the ISS aboard a Soyuz rocket in spring 2012.

Students in grades 5-8 at both schools are being exposed to science as it relates to our nation's quest to live in space and to understand micro-gravity's effects on everything from bacteria to plant growth. They are actively researching in the classroom and going through the scientific process, working with their teachers to learn real science.

The Houston scientific community is getting on-board with researchers, scientists, biologists, physicists, geologists, and many others actively engaged with the student participants. Among them are: Gregory Vogt, Baylor College of Medicine, Robert Dempsey, Jess Tramaglini, and Keith Todd, NASA, Christopher Johns-Krull and Jeff Chancellor, Rice, Lawrence Pinsky and George Fox, UH, Alamelu Sundaresan, Terrell Gibson and Charles Glass, TSU, Ann Martin, geologist, Bruce Thornburgh, bio-medicine.

At the school level, students are being supported by teachers and administrators alike. All of whom are dedicated to providing support, instruction and guidance so students can be part of this once in a lifetime experience

At the district level, board members Larry Marshall and Michael Lunceford both have dedicated time and effort into making this happen from day-one. Houston, we have a team. Houston, we have a mission. Houston, we have something special going on.

This is truly an out-of-this world experience for these young students turned researchers and an amazing opportunity for the Houston community to prove that we really are the nation's "Mission Control." For more information about this opportunity, please visit www.ssep.ncesse.org. To get involved contact: Lanena Berry, lberry1@houstonisd.org or Amber Pinchback apinchba@houstonisd.org.

The Student Space Flight Experiments Program (http://ssep.ncesse.org) is undertaken by the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education (NCESSE; http://ncesse.org) in partnership with Nanoracks, LLC. This on-orbit educational research opportunity is enabled through NanoRacks, LLC, which is working in partnership with NASA under a Space Act Agreement as part of the utilization of the International Space Station as a National Laboratory.