ISJ Spring 2022: The Spacs Programme: A Case Study On Building Effective Collaboration Between Educators And Students / Antonios Karampelas, Maira Pyrgioti, Dimitrios Athanasopoulos, Barbara Simonetou, et al.

An international team of high school students of the American Community Schools of Athens, under the guidance of their teachers and the expert assistance of external collaborators, designed two scientific payloads for two consecutive space flights of Blue Origin’s New Shepard reusable rocket (ACS Athens, 2019; XpatAthens, 2019). The payloads consisted of a total of three scientific experiments designed to be conducted autonomously during New Shepard’s 10 minute flights beyond the Karman line – the ‘boundary’ between the Earth’s atmosphere and outer space at an altitude of 100 kilometres – under microgravity conditions. The school’s payloads were among several other commercial, research (some sponsored by NASA) and educational payloads (Clark, 2019; Foust, 2019).