Students learn life lessons from launch failures

Gabriel Voigt and his teammates joked about it on the way to Florida to see their experiment launch to the International Space Station: It couldn't fail to reach orbit a second time, right? What are the odds?

Last October, the three South Carolina high school students were knocked over by the pressure wave and felt the heat when an Antares rocket exploded seconds after liftoff from Virginia, destroying their experiment and other ISS cargo in a Cygnus spacecraft.

But all looked well when SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral last Sunday morning and faded from view with a Dragon capsule carrying their new-and-improved experiment to study "tin whiskers," metal mutations that can cause electronics failures.

Sixteen-year-old Voigt, leader of the team from Palmetto Scholars Academy in North Charleston, was in line for lunch at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex when sympathetic text messages began to arrive.

"I'm so sorry, how can this happen again?" he remembers the messages saying before he knew the Falcon 9 had failed more than two minutes into flight. "And we were like, wait, what?"

The unlucky students, among 25 teams flying payloads on the Dragon under the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program, have received an outpouring of sympathy after their second setback.

Top NASA officials, members of Congress and astronauts are among those who have offered encouragement, framing the disappointment as a valuable lesson in the challenges of spaceflight and life in general.

"It's really what you do after you've had to face adversity that really defines what you're going to be able to do," said Mike Suffredini, NASA's ISS program manager, in a press conference after the launch failure Sunday. "We'll get them to orbit and we'll do their experiments, and hopefully this will be a positive lesson for them in the end."

"Take heart," U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson said Monday at KSC. "Spaceflight is risky business, but the rewards are exceptional, and you will be successful."

"I really feel bad," added NASA astronaut Scott Kelly on Thursday, speaking to NASA TV from the space station. "But there are lessons learned there about keep moving forward and doing the right thing."

Voigt and his teammates — Joseph Garvey, who also will be a junior next year, and Rachel Lindbergh, who will enroll soon at the University of Chicago — had already delivered much the same message to fellow students coping with their first lost experiment.

Jeff Goldstein, director of the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program, asked them to talk to the group immediately after the launch failure at the Visitor Complex, where they also heard from retired astronaut Jon McBride.

Showing poise and maturity, the teenagers told their counterparts they had an opportunity to make their experiments better.

"There's a lot of life lessons from this about moving forward," said Voigt. "If something brings you down like that, you just keep your head up and keep moving forward and keep pressing on, and eventually the outcome is very good."

Voigt remembers one heartbreaking scene: a young girl who designed an experiment's mission patch was upset and asked if the patch would be OK.

Because the Falcon 9 breakup was so much more distant than the Antares explosion, the South Carolina students were bummed out but not as devastated by the experience.

They arguably had reason to feel more jinxed.

Of the 18 student experiments lost in the Antares rocket explosion, 17 reached the space station earlier this year in a Dragon capsule. But the tin whiskers team took time to improve their experiment, working with mentors who provided parts that had flown on shuttle Endeavour.

Instead of hoping they would see tin whiskers form on circuit boards, they would fly already formed samples and observe how much they detached in orbit.

The experiment would "actually impact the science community, because no one has studied the detachment of tin whiskers in a microgravity environment," said Voigt. "We would be the first ones to test that."

Since the last mishap, the team has done interviews with NBC's "TODAY" show, ABC's "World News Tonight with David Muir" and a Mexican radio station, among other media outlets.

Voigt said he was glad the attention would help spread the word about the opportunity for students around the country to send experiments to space.

His teammates, Garvey and Lindbergh, this week plan to attend an ISS research conference in Boston at which SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is scheduled to be a keynote speaker. Harboring no ill will about the recent Falcon 9 failure, one of their top goals is to meet Musk.

Voigt this summer has an apprenticeship and will continue to play guitar and serve as captain of a paintball team. And he'll continue working on the tin whiskers experiment he started as an eighth-grader.

"We're just going to keep moving and get it done, and hopefully get a successful launch this time," he said. "No matter what, we will be flying again."

Contact Dean at 321-242-3668 or jdean@floridatoday.com. And follow on Twitter at @flatoday_jdean and on Facebook at facebook.com/jamesdeanspace.