Tom Drummond, Director of Education at Orion’s Quest, hopped on a plane to Boston last week to come visit with Sparhawk Middle School students in Amesbury, MA and discuss their progress on their current project, “OQ Mission VIII “Fruit Flies in Space.” This mission supports the work of NASA scientists.
“They were a great audience, had some excellent questions and had obviously dedicated some time to the OQ project,” said Tom Drummond, Director of Education at Orion’s Quest.
Students felt honored to meet with Mr. Drummond and discuss the data they’ve collected about their fruit flies so far. They will be receiving their second round of flies this week, and are looking to see if there are differences between the space flies, and those that have not gone to space, specifically in areas of microgravity.
Students also received a personal thank you from NASA scientists Oana Marcu and Sharmila Bhattacharya ~ “We really appreciate you and your students working along with us on this experimental data. Â Being able to monitor the behavior of fruit flies in space is an opportunity for us to understand some of the effects of microgravity, and can help us predict the consequence of long-term spaceflight.”