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Cubes in Space is an international education programme that provides the opportunity for students to design their own experiments and fly them into space in tiny 4cm cubes!

Four SFC1 (Year 12) students – Jeannie, Margaret, Meteor and Vanessa – have been working together since September to develop viable ideas for experiments that would have social, economic or scientific benefits. Having decided on their ideas, they conducted extensive research and wrote detailed proposals which they submitted to the organisers for their consideration. They were successful in having seven experiments selected for space flight.
Most of their experiments were designed to investigate the effects of intense cosmic radiation on the mutation of teosinte seeds (related to maize) and on the productivity and taste of robusta and arabica coffee beans. Their final experiment was inspired by the antibiotic resistance crisis and will explore the possibility of using bacteriophages, rather than antibiotics, to destroy the pathogens in food (such as E. coli) that are responsible for food poisoning.

Having had their proposals accepted, they had to provide the organisers with a detailed description of how each experiment would be conducted, complete with scientific diagrams for assembly. They also had to source their materials: this proved quite tricky because it turned out that some of their items, such as coffee beans and E.coli, could not be shipped from the UK to the US as they were banned by US customs! The team decided to order all their materials from the US to be shipped internally and assembled by the programme organiser – this took hours of research to find these highly specialised items on the internet and ensure they were small enough to fit inside the tiny 4cm cubes! Having got everything ready and sent on time, their cubes were assembled and launched on 23rd June 2022 from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility. The girls are looking forward to the return of their cubes next term so they can analyse their results.

The girls said: “We really enjoyed taking part in this project, even though we found some aspects, such as forming the hypotheses and experimental methods and buying our materials, challenging. But despite all our setbacks, we are glad we persevered and we definitely learned a lot, not just scientific skills, but also teamwork and patience and time management. We would like to thank the staff in the Physics and Chemistry departments for their help and the team of SFC2 (Year 13) girls who mentored and supported us – they were the first CLC girls to be involved with Cubes in Space and we are looking forward to doing the same for next year’s Cubes in Space team!”

Miss Brandon (Teacher of EET), Jeannie, Margaret, Meteor, Vanessa (all SFC1 /Year 12)