A Model U.S. National STEM Education Initiative for Grades 5-16
to inspire the next generation
of America’s scientists and engineers

NEW SSEP FLIGHT OPPORTUNITY – Mission 22 to the International Space Station
Experiment Design Phase: September to November, 2026; Flight to ISS: Spring 2027    

To explore this opportunity for your community – after carefully reading the SSEP Executive Summary below – email Dr. Jeff Goldstein, SSEP National Program Director, to set up an informational Zoom videoconference for you and your educator team.

Dr. Jeff Goldstein, Center Director, National Center for Earth and Space Science Education
jeffgoldstein@ncesse.org

Mission 22 Press Release (2/2/26) Download: Press Release as PDF

All Media Coverage: SSEP In the News (1,500+ articles)
[VIDEOS] SSEP Launch and On-Orbit Operations History
[VIDEO] SSEP Showcased at Congressional Hearing 11/5/19 – STEM in Era of Commercial Space
[VIDEOS] SSEP Description: Clip 1 (NASA), Clip 2 (NASA)
Scientific American feature article on SSEP: February 17, 2015
SSEP Wins Award for Research on International Space Station

Mission 22 Downloads:
– Mission 22 3-page Program Overview (PDF)
– Mission 22 PowerPoint
– 2-page SSEP Overview with Strategic Objectives, used for Congressional Briefings (PDF)

Breaking News from the SSEP National Blog
Subscribe to the Blog to receive email notification of breaking SSEP News. Use the Subscribe Box at the bottom of the right column.

SSEP / International Space Station Multimedia (click on toggles below)

On this SSEP Community Network Hubsite you can learn about the 242 communities across the U.S., Canada, Brazil and Ukraine that have been engaged in the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program (SSEP), and the over 1,600 organizational partners at the local level thus far (through Mission 18).

Note this Hubsite is a separate web environment from the SSEP Main Website which is where you’ll find a detailed overview of the SSEP, how to participate, and all the needed programmatic resources. This Hubsite is where we celebrate the communities—the tens of thousands of students, their teachers, and their families—engaged in this remarkable adventure on the high frontier.

All Hubsite pages are directly accessible from the navigation banner at the top of this page. Here you can read Community Profiles for each participating community and see the Local Partners that made their participation possible, explore the Experiments Selected for Flight, and see the student-designed Mission Patches that accompanied the experiments into orbit. At this Hubsite you can also explore the In Our Own Words page if you’d like to hear from participating students, teachers, and district administrators, and can read the SSEP in the News page for extensive media coverage of the program. You can also watch oral presentations by student researcher teams at the SSEP National Conference on the Scientific Return and Reporting pages. Finally, follow all SSEP program activities at the SSEP National Blog (you can subscribe to the Blog at the bottom of the right column on the SSEP Main Website.)

Think of this Hubsite as the Grand Central Station for all the students, teachers, families, and communities engaged in SSEP—a program that was designed to be a keystone initiative for U.S. National STEM education, and to inspire America’s next generation of scientists and engineers.

The Community Network – Communities Participating in SSEP Since Program Inception in June 2010

The map provides the location of the 242 communities that have participated in the 20 SSEP flight opportunities to date (through Mission 18 to ISS), and which comprise the SSEP Community Network. To date, 76 communities have now participated in at least 2 – and as many as 11 – flight opportunities, reflecting the sustainable nature of the program.

A Community that has taken part in one SSEP Flight Opportunity to date: Yellow
A Community that has taken part in more than one SSEP Flight Opportunity to date: Green
View the SSEP Communities on a larger map
*The ‘Teachers in Space’ geographically distributed community (participating in Missions 3 and 5) is not shown on the map.