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University Of Maryland Students Send Projects To The ISS

BALTIMORE (WJZ)-- The University of Maryland research teams are sending scientific projects to the International Space Station.

"Launched in Space" University of Maryland students will be taking the controls to monitor their own experiments aboard the International Space Shuttle from their lab in College Park.

They're looking for answers to questions most of us would never think to ask.

Stacey Mannuel, a bio-engineering major, is one of them.

"Yeah it was totally crazy to think that astronauts are going to be handling stuff that we actually created ourselves," Mannuel said.

Theirs will be added to the astronauts to-do list.

The UMD students fall into the category of "science days."

"I first I was kind of skeptic about it, I was like, huh, is this actually going to go into space, this is a real program, but it really was a great program to help me implement what I learn in class and put it out in the real world," Manuel said.

While Stacey's project examines the growth of bacteria in space, another will measure cosmic rays.

Once the projects are launched, this will become ground control.

"Students get really broad experience in this process," said physics professor Eun-Suk Seo. "We will do 24/7. This room will be occupied by at least two persons all the time."

The launch date is just two weeks away.

This is the second launch for the University of Maryland.

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