After months of delays and disasters, a rocket carrying a science experiment designed by Ocean City High School students successfully launched into space early on Saturday morning.
The unmanned SpaceX rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., at 4:47 a.m. Saturday on a two-day journey to the International Space Station.
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Read more about the liftoff.
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The successful launch marks the end of a long wait for Ocean City High School seniors Lauren Bowersock, Kristina Redmond, Mercy Griffith, Daniel Loggi, Kaitland Wriggins and Alison Miles. They have experienced several last-minute postponements since the first planned launch in early October, and they witnessed the explosion of one unmanned rocket seconds after liftoff on Wallops Island, Va.
The OCHS experiment is part of the Student Spaceflight Experiment Program (SSEP), a national program designed to inspire a new generation of scientists and engineers in the U.S. The Ocean City students competed against others nationwide for the opportunity to have their experiment conducted aboard the International Space Station.
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See video of a briefing on all scientific experimentation headed for the Space Station.
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The Ocean City experiment analyzes the effect of microgravity on the attachment rate of E. coli bacteria to lettuce cells — information that would be practical if people ever tried to cultivate food during long periods of travel in space.
The experiment will be conducted aboard the International Space Station — with astronauts releasing the E. coli within a small plastic tube containing the experiment. The rocket is scheduled to return to Earth in about four weeks, and the experiment will be returned to Ocean City for analysis.
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