08/25/2026
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STEM NEWS: Around 100 student-designed experiments recently traveled 123,000 feet above Earth.
NASA’s Salter Test Flight launched from Fort Sumner, New Mexico, on August 22. The scientific balloon reached approximately 23 miles above Earth and remained in flight for 4 hours and 8 minutes.
The mission’s primary purpose was to test hardware for future balloon flights, but it also carried a special piggyback payload: around 100 small Cubes in Space experiments designed by students ages 11–18.
Each experiment had to fit inside a cube approximately four centimeters wide. Students do more than submit an idea: they research flight conditions, develop a testable experiment, prepare a proposal, build the selected payload, and later conduct post-flight testing and analysis.
At 123,000 feet, the experiments reached the stratosphere. That is still approximately 37.5 kilometers above Earth and far beyond the altitude of most everyday aviation.
This is what authentic STEM learning can look like.
If your class could send one tiny experiment into the stratosphere, what would you test?
Sources: NASA Wallops Flight Facility, NASA Scientific Balloon Program, and Cubes in Space.