FORMING A TEAM AND ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS

The NASA Reduced Gravity Student Flight Program competition will accommodate up to 50 teams per year. Each team must consist of:

1. four full-time undergraduate student flyers
2. supervising faculty member (does not have to accompany team to Houston )

In addition, teams may include the following OPTIONAL members:

1. one full - time undergraduate alternate flight-crew member
2. a ground-based crew of no more than 5 members. More than 5 members must be approved by the program coordinator after selection.
3. Once your team is selected, you may invite one professional journalist as a team member. If interested, contact Jenna Mills, Public Affairs Officer at Johnson Space Center, at (281) 244-0185 or jenna.c.mills@nasa.gov for more details. DO NOT contact a journalist until you have spoken to Jenna Mills, as journalists must by approved before being named to your team.

All team members MUST be U.S. Citizens.

All FLYERS MUST be 18 PRIOR to arrival in Houston.

The team's reduced gravity experiment will fly twice. Each flight will accommodate two of the team's four student flyers and the team journalist (optional) will fly once.

Flight crew must pass a modified FAA - Air Force Class III Flight Physical is required for flyers. This includes being within a specific weight guideline (see " Medical Examination Packet" - Height and Weight Table/Page 3). A medically disqualified flight-crew member may still serve as a ground crew member.

Usual academic standards regarding original work apply to all materials submitted for review to this competitive program. In all cases, proper credit should be given for referenced work and, where applicable, copies of permissions granted for use of copyrighted or patented materials included. Any evidence of copying/plagiarism in teams' proposals will result in disqualification.  To be safe, please do not copy any textual part of a previous proposal, even if your proposal was not selected last year and your ideas are basically the same, find a new way to say it.

Experiments/hardware that have been flown three times in the RGSFP will not be considered for a fourth flight (three two-day flights maximum.) Student experiments must be organized, designed, and operated by student team members alone. While universities and private industry groups are allowed to sponsor teams (providing funds and equipment), they will not use any student team as a means to obtain their own research objectives. Any student team discovered performing research on behalf of another entity, will be disqualified from the competition immediately.

In all cases, student experiment objectives and design must originate from the student team. When research equipment is donated by private industry groups and/or NASA researchers, students must disclose its past research use and explain how it will be used to obtain different objectives during the student program.

Lastly, the student program can not safeguard proprietary, sensitive, private, or confidental data.  If your experiment contains such data, processes, equipment or relationships, you are encouraged to find another venue for microgravity testing.