NASA to Students: Just Drop It

September 25, 2009 - Go ahead - drop it! You won’t get in trouble … really. In fact, NASA is encouraging it, inviting student teams to experience microgravity science by designing and building experiments to be conducted in a NASA drop tower. Dropping In a Microgravity Environment, or DIME, is a competition for high school students. Students in grades 6-9 can compete in What If No Gravity, or WING. Both competitions are open to teams from any state, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Teams may be formed from a science class or club, group of classes, scout troop or similar organization. Each team must have an adult adviser, such as a teacher, parent or technical consultant. To enter the competitions, teams must develop a concept for a microgravity experiment, and prepare and submit a proposal to NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland by November 2. A panel of engineers and scientists at Glenn will evaluate and select the top-ranked proposals for both competitions by December 10. Click here for more details how to enter the student competitions. The top four DIME teams will be invited to Cleveland in April 2010 to conduct their experiments in Glenn's 2.2-Second Drop Tower and review the results with NASA personnel. Microgravity experiments are often tested in the drop tower before use on the space shuttle or International Space Station. Several additional DIME teams and up to 50 WING teams will be invited to ship their experiments to Glenn to be drop-tested by NASA staff. These experiments and the resulting data will be returned to the teams so they can prepare reports about their findings. A YouTube channel has been established for DIME and WING. That channel contains more videos that illustrate the drop tower and a few of the previous experiments constructed by DIME teams.

View from the 8th floor as technicians ready the drag shield assembly. Photo credit: NASA Technicians prepare for a drop on the 8th floor of the tower. Photo credit: NASA

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