NASA will send 14 groups of students and their experiments on a plane that NASA uses to train some of its astronauts for missions in space. The plane will climb to low gravity before diving back toward Earth so quickly that the weight of everything onboard will double, and that roller-coaster like motion will happen 30 times.
The experiments range from researching how to improve bone density in astronauts to testing whether video games can combat space traveler boredom, and they come from a host of minority-serving universities across the country as a part of NASA's 2014 Minority University Research and Education Program.
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Students construct the experiments at their schools and NASA sends them to Johnson Space Center in Houston, where they will launch.
"NASA is committed to the recruitment of underrepresented and underserved students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics to sustain a diverse workforce," NASA said in a press release. "Participation in NASA projects and research stimulates students to continue their studies at all levels of the higher education continuum and earn advanced degrees in these critical fields."
The first flight is scheduled for Nov. 8, and they will continue throughout that week.
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Image: Wikimedia Commons