Sea-Monkeys in Space

When a former Upper St. Clair student learned that NASA would evaluate student experiments for an upcoming shuttle trip, she quickly contacted her former biology teacher, Pat Palazzolo. Pat had been a finalist in the 1985 Teacher in Space competition for the Challenger mission that sadly ended in disaster, and she was still very interested in space studies. She and her Fort Couch Middle School students brainstormed about what living thing could be loaded on the shuttle in the summer and wait for the launch in the fall. One student suddenly thought of his Sea-Monkeys Live Eggs packet! Under NASA's tight schedule and strict guidelines, Pat and her 23 seventh graders put together an acceptable proposal to test for differences in Sea-Monkeys sent to space from those remaining on earth. With some help from a few Upper St. Clair High School honors biology students, they planned ways to test several variables and calculate the data.

Many last-minute phone calls and overnight delivery packages later, everything was finally set to go -- well, notwithstanding a postponement due to a hurricane! Nine lucky students were able to attend the launch on October 29, 1998, when the Sea-Monkeys went into orbit with John Glenn! The space-travelling eggs withstood many dramatic environmental changes and physical forces including weightlessness, exposure to radiation, 3 G's of gravitational force during reentry, and temperature fluctuations equal to many trips between an oven and freezer! To date, the Sea-Monkey eggs that hatched eight weeks after their return have shown no significant differences from their earthbound counterparts! After nine days in space and about 3.6 million miles of travel, the conclusion is: Sea-Monkeys have "the right stuff."