Friday, August 5, 2016

"The Uber Sciencey Post" (A.K.A. the report for our teacher)

... As delivered by Dr. Tony the Cat, because cute cats make everything more interesting. :-)

We Have The Green Light, or Rather, A Green Cactus.

We are ready to move on to the next phase of our experiment, and our results so far have greatly exceeded our expectations.

Today we unpacked, measured, weighed, sorted, photographed, and re-packaged the cacti from the sounding rocket experiment cube and its control.

The control, although moldy, is not only still alive, but has started growing roots.

The two pieces of cactus that went to space have returned relatively unscathed. One has a spot that is rotting, and the other is in perfect condition. Both possess a vibrant green color, and we have high hopes for being able to revive all of the samples.

These results are much better than we had anticipated, as we had expected the cactus to be completely brown and dormant upon arrival. This places us slightly ahead of schedule, and puts us in a position to slowly reintroduce the samples to light over the upcoming week.

We will  post a more detailed report tomorrow, that will have pictures documenting the steps we took while unpacking the cactus, and provide some of our hypotheses for the changes we observed in the samples.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

Edith and Julius

Wednesday, August 3, 2016

We Haz The Precious!

*The above use of "Teen Grammar" haz has been approved by our teacher ;-)

A really cool sticker that CiS sent us along with our experiment cube.

Today Julius and I went to get our experiment cube! It is finally here! We don't have enough time to open it today, but we will get to it as soon as possible, and there will be MANY pictures!

Thank you for reading!

-Edith

Saturday, July 23, 2016

NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Today I decided to stop by the school closet where our control cubes are housed, and discovered that the rocket control is growing mold! The good news is that the research balloon control seems to be mold-free, but this does make me wonder how our experiments are doing...

Thank you for reading!

-Edith

Saturday, July 16, 2016

Up Next: The Stratosphere!

Credits: NASA/Wallops Flight Facility
Today Julius and I learned that the research balloon carrying our second cactus experiment will launch on August 22nd! I am not sure wether this one will have a live-stream or not, but I will write a post when I know more!

Thank you for reading!

-Edith

Saturday, July 9, 2016

Image courtesy of NASA Wallops Facility

The video of the sounding rocket launch is up! If you would like to watch our experiment launch into space, you can do so HERE!
Julius and I are currently waiting to get our sounding rocket experiment back from Cubes in Space headquarters. Also, we are looking forward to the launch of the research balloon in August that will carry our second cactus experiment into the stratosphere!

Thank you for reading!
-Edith

Saturday, July 2, 2016

Post-Launch Timeline

Image courtesy of NASA Wallops Facility.
(Will be updated to include future events)

June 24, 2016:
Sounding rocket experiment has launched from NASA Wallops Facility! You can view the official press release HERE.

June 24, 2016:
Research balloon experiment is at Cubes in Space Headquarters waiting for launch in August.

June, 28, 2016:
Experiments successfully returned to Cubes in Space Headquarters.