UGDSB Students’ Experiment Returns from Space
- Friday, January 24th, 2025 - 8:22 am
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An experiment designed by four UGDSB students and launched into space with NASA astronauts as part of the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program (SSEP) has returned with some intriguing findings.
The project aimed to discover whether soil bacteria could break down compostable plastic more effectively in microgravity than on Earth. The students hypothesized that if bacteria were able to decompose compostable plastics in space, the process could potentially be used to manage food waste on missions, turning it into nutrients to help grow plants and sustain future space agriculture.
To test their hypothesis, the team prepared a sample containing three 2cm x 2cm pieces of compostable plastic placed in a tube filled with soil. This sample spent four weeks aboard the International Space Station (ISS) in November 2024. A matching control sample remained on Earth to compare the rate of degradation in normal gravity. The students also prepared a third sample containing only compostable plastic, without any soil, to evaluate how much of a role soil bacteria played in breaking down the material.
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The samples were carefully opened on January 17, 2025, at Elora Public School, with teachers Keri Hons and Sherri Woodland from Alma Public School supervising the process. As soon as the containers were opened, the students observed a noticeable difference between the two. The soil from the space sample appeared damp and clumped together, whereas the Earth sample was much drier and had a crumbly texture.
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In addition to the differences in soil texture, the plastic pieces themselves showed similar results between the space and ground samples. The pieces that had been more fully surrounded by soil experienced the most decomposition, shrinking to about 1.5cm x 1.5cm in size. In contrast, pieces that were not as well embedded in the soil remained close to their original dimensions of 2cm x 2cm. The control sample, which contained no soil at all, showed little to no change and stayed roughly the same size as when it was first placed in the tube.
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Although the results suggest that microgravity didn’t significantly affect the bacteria’s ability to break down compostable plastic, they do indicate that composting in space could function much like it does on Earth. This insight could help astronauts plan how much organic waste they can compost during missions and estimate how quickly it will decompose to support future space sustainability efforts.
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