International Space Station helps Houston students with slime mold experiment

HOUSTON – Cristo Rey Jesuit College Preparatory School of Houston science students celebrated Sunday night after sending a re-engineered slime mold experiment to the International Space Station, school administrators said.

Administrators said the experiment is part of a payload aboard the SpaceX9 flight that launched from Cape Canaveral.

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Once the slime mold experiment is loaded onto the space station, it will be fed coconut water pumped into petri dishes, administrators said. Slime molds are single-celled organisms that can communicate with each other through chemical signals. The molds can also “learn” despite not having brains.

During the project, cameras will take photos of the slime every five minutes and create a time-lapse film that will indicate whether the slime mold is confused by the lack of gravity in space.

The school’s success follows a failed launch in October 2014, when a flight carrying two experiments created by former students — who are now in college — exploded on the launch pad at Wallops Island in Virginia.

“Of course we were all crushed,” science teacher Greg Adragna said. “But these kids bounced back and never gave up. It’s an honor to have a science experiment sent into space through a partnership with NASA, CASIS and NanoRacks."

The experiment will be conducted in space for almost 25 days before heading home to be analyzed.