Mission Discovery

Mission Discovery is an international education program run for teenagers in many countries around the world. The programme started in 2012 in King's College London, England, UK and has expanded to countries like Australia, USA and India.

Mission discovery is run and directed by ISSET (International Space School Education Trust) which is a registered UK charity founded in 1998 by Chris Barber. So far there have been 15 successful programs (1 in India, 12 in the UK and 2 in the USA) with more still to come. Each program has given the students the chance to work with inspiring role models while they work as a team, designing experiments that could be carried out on the International Space Station. As part of this program, at least 1 experiment designed by the students is sent to, and carried out on, the International Space Station.

Mission Discovery is a week long event in which the pupils are split into random groups to design an experiment that could be launched into space. During this week the teams are involved in exercises that will develop their leadership, team building, and personal development skills, while also giving them an insight into scientific fields with a relation to space. The pupils will also get talks from various astronauts, scientists and people from fields outside of science, covering topics from biomedical and scientific research done by NASA to the astronaut's experiences in space and what space is like as well as things like public speaking and how to suitably present information. The talks themselves can include topics like what it is like to live in space and how astronauts are actually trained for space travel and living in space. Towards the end of the week, the program is more focused on the design of the student's experiments. The students are given time to design an experiment they believe could work in space and are then tasked with presenting it in both, an informative and interesting way, because to win you don't only need to come up with a good idea, but also convince the judges that the idea is as good as you think it is. On the final day, the pupils present their ideas to other colleagues and mentors as well as different scientists, doctors, and professors from universities. The winning idea has their experiment designed and sent to the International Space Station where astronauts there will carry out experiments.

So far there have been 20 different winning experiments. Each of these winning experiments is then further designed with help from researchers and scientists. After a lengthy process of designing the experiment, the winning team is invited to watch the rocket launch carrying their experiment to the International Space Station. These experiments are then carried out by the current astronauts on board the ISS. Depending on the complexity and the issues with the experiments, they normally take up 2 to 3 years to be launched and carried out on board the ISS.

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