SSEP Mission 19 to ISS: Mission Patch Art and Design Competition Interest Form

The Student Spaceflight Experiments Program (SSEP) is about inspiring America’s next generation of scientists and engineers, and engaging entire communities in the process. Student teams proposing real experiments to fly on the International Space Station is the core SSEP activity. But community-wide engagement, and cross-disciplinary learning are also cornerstone objectives for SSEP in the context of the embraced Learning Community Model for STEM education (see the Community Program page.)

In this spirit, and continuing the tradition of SSEP started on the final flights of Space Shuttles Endeavour and Atlantis, we’re providing the opportunity for you to conduct an art and design competition across your community—for a large number of students—to create a Mission Patch—a paper 3.5-inch x 3.5-inch square emblem that captures your SSEP experience. We will then fly your Mission Patch in space as part of the payload containing your experiment, and it will be returned to you embossed with a certification stating that it flew in space. The mission patch competition is also an opportunity to keep community-wide excitement alive post experiment selection while we’re all waiting for launch, and a means to extend the program in an interdisciplinary manner to engage, e.g., classes in art and design, and history.

Tulane University will host two separate compeitions awarding two separate patches: Middle School Grades 6-8; High School Grades 9-12. Teachers from each school will select a winning entry from that school and send scans to Tulane for consideration. A team of faculty from the School of Science and Engineering and the Department of Art will select the winners from the middle and high school teams, ranking the clarity of the theme to the viewer, orginality, creativity, compisition, and execution.

If you are interested in running a mission patch competition at your school or would like to learn more about the competition, please complete the interest form below.