Bedfordshire student will work with NASA astronauts in International Space Station experiement

William Johnson, from Kimberley College, will see an experiment he designed blasting off to the International Space Station this week.

William and his team beat more than 60 students from 20 schools to win ISSET’s Mission Discovery, a competition led by former NASA astronaut Dr Michael Foale and held at Cranfield University.

“It was great to have the opportunity to inspire young people to get involved in STEM,” said Cranfield’s Dr. Paul Jones.

“We look forward to seeing the results of the experiment.”

The winning experiment, looking at how ionic fluids behave in micro-gravity, is being entirely automated and will return data to earth for the students to interpret on an almost live basis.

William’s teammate, Matthew, from Shenley Brook End School in Milton Keynes expressed his excitement by saying: “It’s great that the experiment is going up and I’m looking forward to getting the data back and seeing the results - it’s really exciting.”

SpaceX-10 has given the launch date as February 18 at 10:01am.

The launch will be viewable on NASA TV.

Principal of Kimberley College, Tim Detheridge said: “We are very proud of William. This is an incredible opportunity and to be part of something which is literally ‘out of this world’, could not have come to a more deserving student.

“Students from Kimberley College were also part of the first ISSET cohort to visit the Russian cosmonauts training facility in Star City, Moscow.

“Now with William designing an experiment to be undertaken on the international space station, it looks like there are no boundaries to aspirations for our students.”

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