The Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum and the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education will host the 2012 Student Spaceflight Experiments Program (SSEP) National Conference on July 2 and 3.  The SSEP National Conference is a real science conference designed to give student scientists an opportunity to report on microgravity experiments that they designed and were flown in low Earth orbit.  Reporting will be done through both oral and poster presentations, which is precisely what scientists do at professional science conferences.

The SSEP is a national Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education initiative. It gives thousands of students each year the ability to design and propose real experiments to fly in low Earth orbit - originally onboard the space shuttle, but now on the International Space Station.  The SSEP program is open to elementary, middle, high school, and college students in the US and internationally.  Information on the SSEP program is available on the organization's website at ssep.ncesse.org.

  This conference is free and open to the public.