Shelton High students watch as their space shuttle experiment blasts off

High school students in Connecticut are about to get a rare glimpse into the rigors of space science—their experiment, selected from thousands of proposals nationwide, is launching aboard a resupply mission to the International Space Station. The Shelton High team's work could help NASA understand how microgravity affects everything from plant growth to materials science, giving teenagers a front-row seat to research that typically happens in elite university labs. It's a reminder that breakthrough science increasingly depends on getting young minds invested in STEM before they even graduate.

Greenwich Time·May 16