[5][6][7] In the first fourteen SSEP flight opportunities, 86,800 students in grades 5 through 16 (senior undergraduate in the U.S. higher education system) participated in experiment design and proposal writing.
[8] The 18 experiments comprising Mission 6 to the ISS were lost when the Cygnus CRS Orb-3 vehicle exploded shortly after launch on 28 October 2014.
[9] The competition to select student projects for flight is designed to resemble a standard research proposal process.
[17] Each selected experiment is provided with one mini-laboratory, which is flown on the ISS and then returned to Earth for analysis.
[6] Experiments selected for flight have included research into crystal growth, composting, cell division, seed germination, and calcium metabolism.