Hathaway Brown (HB) School for Girls
Students have a big stake in the upcoming Discovery launch.
HB students
assisted in the preparation of polymer materials for MISSE (Materials
International Space Station Experiment), an experiment sponsored by the Air
Force Research Lab/Materials Lab and NASA.

Back in 1998, HB applied for and received from the American Chemical
Society a reservation to fly an experiment aboard a space shuttle.
“HB wanted
to develop an experiment that would address a real problem that could only be
answered through a space flight experiment exposed to the ambient conditions
of low Earth orbit,” explains Patricia K. Hunt, HB director of research.
“To
help brainstorm an idea for this experiment, we contacted researchers from
NASA Glenn Research in Cleveland, and together we developed the experiment
called PEACE (Polymer Erosion And Contamination Experiment) — and so a
collaboration began between HB and NASA Glenn.”

One benefit of this collaboration is NASA Glenn’s PEACE Polymer Experiment
on MISSE, scheduled to launch August 9th on the Space Shuttle Discovery
(Shuttle Mission STS-105).
The MISSE Project is managed by NASA Langley
Research Center, Hampton, VA and is a cooperative effort among NASA, the Air
Force, Boeing, and several industry participants.
MISSE will be mounted
outside the International Space Station for approximately 12 months.
HB students who helped prepare the NASA Glenn polymer samples will go to the
NASA Kennedy Space Center, FL to see the launch of Discovery.

“PEACE and MISSE are two experiments that will provide researchers with
important information about how polymers react in space,” says Kim de Groh,
senior materials engineer, Electro-Physics Branch, NASA Glenn.
“It is a
unique collaboration between NASA Glenn and HB that has been extremely
beneficial to both parties.
The involvement of high school students in
important flight experiments is truly a rare opportunity that involves
multiple projects and long-term research opportunities.”

Hathaway Brown School, founded in 1876, is Ohio’s oldest independent
preparatory school for girls in grades K-12.