{"id":252735,"date":"2026-04-30T17:39:06","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T17:39:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/252735\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T17:39:06","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T17:39:06","slug":"st-petersburg-college-students-reach-for-orbit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/252735\/","title":{"rendered":"St. Petersburg College students reach for orbit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Three <a href=\"https:\/\/www.spcollege.edu\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">St. Petersburg College<\/a> students are preparing to send their research beyond the classroom and into orbit.<\/p>\n<p>Sophomores Eilya Yazdani and Vinicio Castillo and early college student Nicholas Tsongranis were selected as SPC\u2019s winning team for Mission 21 of the <a href=\"https:\/\/ssep.ncesse.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Student Spaceflight Experiments Program<\/a>, a national initiative that gives students the chance to design experiments for the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/international-space-station\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">International Space Station<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Their project will fly on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/event\/nasas-spacex-crs-34\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">NASA\u2019s SpaceX CRS-34<\/a> commercial resupply mission, which will carry science, supplies and equipment to the orbiting laboratory.<\/p>\n<p>The SPC team\u2019s experiment studies the formation and properties of calcium alginate hydrogels in microgravity. The work could help researchers better understand materials used in medical and engineering applications when gravity is removed from the equation.<\/p>\n<p>The project was chosen from 14 other SPC teams and is supported by a $26,000 grant from the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.spcollege.edu\/foundation\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">SPC Foundation<\/a>. Dr. Grace Moore, assistant dean of natural sciences, is mentoring the team.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSeeing these students transition from learning science to practicing it at a competitive level is exactly why we promote hands-on research at SPC,\u201d Moore said in the college\u2019s announcement.<\/p>\n<p>The mission will carry more than science. SPC held a \u201cMerging Art and Science\u201d competition to create mission patches for the project. Mark DeRemer, an SPC digital media student, and Andrei Popescu, a fourth grader at Gulf Trace Elementary, designed the selected patches.<\/p>\n<p>The Student Spaceflight Experiments Program is run by the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education in the U.S., and the Arthur C. Clarke Institute for Space Education internationally. The program is designed to give students from upper elementary school through college direct experience with experiment design, flight constraints and real research conducted in low Earth orbit.<\/p>\n<p>For SPC, the selection gives three students a rare place in the space research pipeline. Their work will move from Pinellas County to the ISS as part of a broader national effort to connect STEM education with active spaceflight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three St. Petersburg College students are preparing to send their research beyond the classroom and into orbit. Sophomores&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":252736,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-252735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252735\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/252736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}