Four Cleburne High School Career and Technical Education engineering students are on the countdown for the pending launch of an experiment of their design, scheduled for flight from NASA’s Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility.

                The team includes senior co-captains Elizabeth Youngberg and Emily Day and juniors Gabe Clifford and Xavier Rodriguez, under the sponsorship of CHS Engineering teacher Roel Peña. They are participants in the Cubes in Space STEM program, which engages students ages 11-18 in suborbital flight opportunities relating to NASA missions.

                “This is a tremendous project, which is based on a competition process,” Peña said. “We had to submit an Intent to Fly form, providing information about the team’s experiment and the stated hypothesis. It’s a challenging selection process that is vetted three times by a review panel of aerospace science, engineering and education professionals. Your experiment can be kicked out for lack of detail, sustainability to the mission or lack of documentation.”

                “We shot from the hip in submitting our proposal, which was part of a 26-page document required for all applicants,” he said. “I’m super proud of these kids and all their work in preparing their entry. We were thrilled when we found out we survived the cuts—and their experiment was going into orbit.”

                Following a series of brainstorming sessions, the CHS engineers chose to test a series of antihistamines to determine what impact space might have on their effectiveness.

                “Fifty million Americans suffer with allergies of some form,” Peña said. “As more people go into space, more people with allergies will be going into space. I think they came up with a fantastic experiment. Their discussions for the Cubes in Space project led to not one, but many good ideas—so this experiment will be the first of many for our students.”

                Packed into the Cleburne team’s 40mm payload cube are four packets of crushed over-the-counter antihistamine pills.

                “We don’t know if the medications will clump due to radiation and turn to liquified jelly,” Peña said. “We just don’t know—and that’s the fun of this. This will let our students see for themselves what happens to the medications under different conditions.”

                The Cleburne team has been waiting for weeks for the launch, which had been set for last Tuesday, but was scrubbed due to weather. A second scheduled launch on Friday had the same results, with Monday now set as the next opportunity.

               Peña is very familiar with the mechanics of space flight. The aerospace engineer served 20 years at Lockheed Martin before answering the call to begin a second career as an educator.

                “This doesn’t involve a weather balloon,” Peña said. “The Cubes in Space cargo will be placed on an 11-million cubic foot balloon that will maintain a float altitude of 122,000 feet in the upper stratosphere for six hours. It will touch down due west of Fort Sumner, New Mexico, which is on the border with Arizona.”

                Every member of the team has takeaways from their involvement in Cubes in Space.  They are all enrolled in Engineering Design II this year, with Peña as their teacher.

                “It’s pretty cool to be a part of this and Mr. Peña is a great teacher,” Clifford said. “I’ve liked collaborating with the other kids. It’s been an opportunity to learn, to do something interesting. Elon Musk is wanting to get people into space. Our experiment may help those who will be going.”

                Youngberg, who has the distinction of being the first Cleburne student to achieve the FAA 107 Certified Drone Pilot Certification through the high school’s engineering program, said she is proud to be a member of Cleburne’s first Cubes in Space team.

“This was a group effort—and definitely a lot of hard work--in putting together a hypothesis and explanation of the experiment, using technical language,” she said. “It also required a lot of research. But it’s been fun to think what we might learn from this. When I tell people about what we’re doing I feel very proud. I plan to major in engineering in college and I can put on my resume that I have been part of the space program.”

                Day, who was very involved in the communication section of their entry application, including the production of a video, has always been fascinated with space.

                “It’s insane—I really wanted to be a part of this,” Day said. “It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity for kids. We learned a lot working together as a team and helping each other.”

                Day would like to be a space traveler. Rodriguez would like to see space travel possible for everyone.

                “Being able to send something into space is very cool,” Rodriguez said. “I want to be an aerospace engineer, and this will help pave the way for me to get into that. Studies like this are very important. I think what we are doing through this experiment is creating common conditions for the common man. Millionaires are going into space now, but that will change. When computers first came out, only the wealthy could afford one—now everyone can purchase a computer. I think it will be the same thing with space travel.”

                Once their experiment in a cube returns to earth, it will be returned to Cleburne, where the students will conduct additional and controlled experiments to test for the effects of radiation and other space-related agents.  

                “This year, we focused on medication, but next time it may be something else,” Day said. “I think Cubes in Space at CHS is here to stay. It makes kids think outside the box. We have learned so much.”