Early Thursday morning, the Space X Dragon capsule docked with the International Space Station. The capsule is carrying supplies for the astronauts who live aboard the ISS, but it’s also carrying an experiment devised by students at Traverse City West High School.
The students want to know how quickly blue algae grows in space, and they convinced NASA to send their algae samples.
"All Things Considered" host Aaron Selbig spoke with two of the students who worked on the experiment – Robbie Lohr and Hayden Holmes – and their science teacher, Patrick Gillespie. Holmes says the experiment is designed to compare the growth rate for blue algae in zero gravity to the growth rate here on Earth.