Article by grade 6 student at R. Tait McKenzie Public School
This year, 2025-2026, grade 4, 5 and 6 students at R. Tait McKenzie, Naismith and Pakenham schools in the community of Mississippi Mills Ontario have participated in a competition to develop science experiments to send to space. This microgravity experiment competition is open to students from grade 5 to university and is part of the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program (SSEP). The interested students began to develop their experiment proposals by following specific rules with the materials they can use but remember this; only 1 group will send their experiments into space to record their results. At the 3 local schools, student groups have conducted their experiments in a simulated mini lab to record how the materials change or react. Most of the groups focused on germinating seeds to hopefully help grow plants in space. “Maybe one of the groups could discover something amazing,” says Grade 6 teacher Ms. Costello.
The grade 4, 5 and 6 students from R. Tait McKenzie, Naismith and Pakenham schools felt lucky to be able to take part in an experiment writing competition where they had a chance to make a positive difference and compete to send their experiment to the International Space Station as part of SSEP Mission 21, through implementation partner Rhodium Scientific. Many students focused on seeds as the material to potentially send into space and propose to record seed growth or change once they get back from space. The experiment proposals must comply with the requirements of the Rhodium Flight Experiment Tube (RhFET-01). The RhFET-01 is flight hardware that allows for controlled exposure and mixing of samples within the microgravity environment. “I thought that it looked really cool,’ says Ms. Costello, a teacher at R. Tait McKenzie.
THE NUMBERS
After gathering all the proposals from the three schools in our community, local scientists completed a review process to select the finalist proposals. There were 7 judges, many who have science background and one who is a retired teacher. There were 379 pages of proposals that they had to judge, 43 proposals made by 175 students. The judges even made their own 100-point rubric program to judge the proposals!
THE WINNERS
All the students from all these schools did very well and a big congratulations to the winners of this competition which were Ellie McBride and Ollie St. Louis with the proposal: ‘Would broccoli sprout faster in low gravity?’
The SSEP’s goal is to help students with science by instructing them on the way to make an actual scientific proposal. In all, the experiments that students around the world are developing is amazing! This kind of learning could help develop a child’s learning skills and make more of them want to become scientists in the future.
The selected flight experiment proposal was from grade 6 students Ellie McBride and Ollie St. Louis.
