LOS ANGELES (AP) — The SpaceX rocket carrying supplies to the International Space Station Sunday didn’t just lose food and other necessities; it also was carrying school science experiments.
The unmanned rocket broke apart shortly after liftoff from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
A Russian resupply ship is scheduled to leave Kazakhstan with much of the space station cargo that was lost, 24 experiments, including three from California schools, were lost in the malfunction.
The California projects were from an eighth-grade class at Lincoln Middle School in Santa Monica, and seniors at Petaluma High School and Damien High School in La Verne. All the experiments aboard the SpaceX rocket Sunday were part of the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program.
Student Spaceflights director Jeff Goldstein says another round of experiments will not be able to be launched until 2016.
