NASA to Introduce Indian Student’s Experiments into Space

Prerna Pai, 11 year old Indian Girl in Dubai, is the only participant from the UAE who had her two experimental payloads for space sanctioned by National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), under a space agency’s programme, meant for young students and aspiring scientists.

Ms. Pai, a 7th grade student at Sharjah’s Delhi Private School (DPS), submitted her two experiment ideas that she called 'To stick or not to stick' and 'Time and Pressure', which got chosen among the 100 other selected experiments, which are to be fired into space by NASA on 26 June 2014.

Her first experiment revolves around studying ways in which different adhesives may behave in space when there is absence of atmospheric pressure. Whereas, the second experiment has two tiny bottles -- one of plastic and the other of glass, which are sealed with a modelling clay cork and placed in a cube.

In partnership with Rubik Learning Initiative, idoodle software and the Colorado Space Grant Consortium's RockSat-C programme, the NASA launched its CIS programme this year in May.

CIS is an international educational programme for school children that teaches them how to design STEM experiments for launch into space. STEM refers to the academic disciplines of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Among those, whose experiments are selected under the programme, 75 are American students and the other 25 are from the rest of the world, for the current launch.