I am Andrew Craig and I couldn’t be more excited to have an experiment I designed go to space.
The Cosmic Critters started over donuts. I (Andrew) met and worked with Daniel, Emily, Matthew, and Peyton at Go For Launch! Mars last summer (2024). This is one of the many regional competitions where high-school students collaborate on space-related activities, climaxing in a competition to propose a viable experiment worthy of being actually sent to the International Space Station (ISS). Inspired by the incredible stories of Michelle Lucas and Astronaut Wendy Lawrence of Higher Orbits who led the event, we worked together on challenges and started designing an experiment which we hoped would make it to space. Little could we imagine that we would succeed - what an awesome feeling!
Being an avid explorer of human knowledge, spending countless hours with Kurzgesagt, Veritasium, and many others, I discovered the curious wonders of slime molds some time ago. As our team was spit-balling microgravity experiment ideas, my pitch of slime mold maze optimization, and what that might look like in 3D, was an instant hit.
Slime mold is a fascinating single celled protist that can stretch around corners, find food, adapt, and solve problems. It has been able to solve exponentially difficult optimization problems in linear time, map out efficient subway systems, and even find use in the space industry thanks to smile mold algorithms based off of its behavior. We were thinking “Imagine what you could do with slime mold if you removed its gravitational restraints, and let it roam in microgravity. If we take this amazing creature that can solve optimization problems in 2D, what sort of problems can it solve in 3D without gravity pulling it away from its potential?”
Over the three day event, while we had a good initial concept, it took effort to get the team to practice the presentation itself. I was convinced we needed to practice our presentation to have a chance of doing well. While my teammates were initially confident in what we built, I’m happy they agreed to practice together. We built a shared understanding which helped us not only present well as a team, but also to ace the Q&A portion of the presentation, where many other teams struggled.
After three days of work, collaboration, and some breaks for putt putt, we got to presentations. We went last, and sat together, feeling nervous, but also confident in the value of our experiment. After all the other teams proposed some very cool ideas, we maintained an uneasy confidence as we stepped up to the stage. I remember it all went smoothly, and as I mentioned, we loved answering the questions at the end.
Some tense minutes followed, as we were being judged by an Astronaut and an Astronaut trainer. When they came up to announce the results, we were delighted to be chosen as the winners of Go For Launch Mars! We had taken a big step on the way to space.
We continued researching slime mold, optimization and 3D space for months. Then, we were introduced to our partner team, Aeroloco, who had an experiment nearly identical to ours, and Space Tango, a company that works with Higher Orbits to create experiments. We agreed to join forces and together work towards the ISS mission. Whether it was deciding how to embed the oats, or figuring out how to use sclerotium for launch, I learned a lot about teamwork. I poured myself into the experiment. When we began planning with Space Tango, their original design placed the slime mold in its active plasmodium phase directly in the maze on agar, with the idea that it would start searching for oats only after some time — even if launch was days or weeks away. I was adamant that we needed to dehydrate it to its sclerotium phase so that it would not solve the maze in storage or on the launchpad where gravity would alter the results. While some team members were confused or saw no issue, I convinced them that it was a necessity to get accurate results. I was on a family ski trip, and I chose to sacrifice some of my vacation time to work with the team to save the experiment. We would launch it in its sclerotium and rehydrate it to solve the maze in the plasmodium phase. Through more than a year's worth of experience, I was able to hone my leadership and communication skills. I learned about engaging with others and how to adapt to changes.
I am very excited to send our experiment to the ISS. The ISS has been conducting experiments for humanity since 1998. It only has a few years left and I am thankful to be able to send an experiment to this haven of research. Cape Canaveral has been the sight of many historic rocket launches and the experiments they have carried. I hope that our experiment and research is similarly able to benefit humanity. I look forward to reconnecting with my team members in person. It’s hard to believe that I’m sending an experiment to space.
Written by Stellar Student Andrew Craig, Team Cosmic Critters, Winners of Go For Launch! Mars 2024
