Popcorn from Suborbital Spaceflight

Abstract

A successful popcorn experiment from a K-12 STEM engagement was flown to sub-orbital space and is described. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first popcorn popped in spaceflight. The experiment topic provides numerous K-12 lessons in electrical and thermal energy and power, energy in compressed steam, the bursting of a pressure vessel, microprocessor control of hardware, and similar. Engineering challenges imposed by limited mass and power available to the K-12 payload are discussed, and the successful solution to the power limit problem is described. The experiment is the latest to fly in the Purdue School Launchbox on Blue Origin’s New Shepard vehicle. This experiment flew on Blue Origin’s NS-29 mission, which spun the Crew Capsule to create acceleration equal to lunar surface gravity, and so the popcorn kernel popped in space while subjected to lunar surface gravity.