YouTube Space Lab: Bill Nye, contest winners, share results as streamed from space

YouTube will be streaming the results of its Space Lab contest winners experiments from the International Space Station Thursday, with a live-streamed event hosted by Bill Nye.

The contest, which asked young people from all over the world to come up with experiments that could be done in zero gravity, comes to a close with a live broadcast from the International Space Station at 10:50 a.m., Eastern.

Winners were announced in March. The experiments chosen to be conducted on the station explored how a zero-gravity environment would affect how spiders jump, and how that environment would affect the growth and virulence of bacteria.

Dorothy Chen and Sara Ma, of Troy, Mich. who submitted the bacteria experiment said that they are, of course, excited to travel to London and hear the results of their experiment, but that theyre simply hoping that there are results to report.

I hope that they find something, and that they didnt just all die, said Chen, a junior in high school.

Ma, also a junior, added that its an exciting time to be working on this kind of science.

It is such an interesting time to be working on this with the renewed interest in space, she said, citing both the Curiosity Rover and the celebration of late astronaut Neil Armstrong.

Bill Nye, known for his PBS show Bill Nye the Science Guy and his work in science advocacy, said that finding ways to test how humans could live and thrive in space is one of the most important things scientists can be doing right now.

These are wonderful questions that space exploration allows you to seek the answers to some important questions, he said. Space exploration brings out the best in us, in humans. It challenges us. Its peaceful. It raises the expectations of everyone in the world of whats possible, and its inherently optimistic.

This contest, he said, is just one example of how governments and other entities can work together to further the cause of space exploration.

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YouTube Space Lab: Bill Nye, contest winners, share results as streamed from space