Edina High School students' project will be launched on SpaceX spacecraft

MINNEAPOLIS (FOX 9) - This week Edina High School seniors Josh Cram and Colin Shaw, along with sophomore Grayson Irons, are feeling over the moon after learning their work in the Twin Cities will soon appear on the world stage.

For months they’ve been hard at work on a project to help grow food on board an outgoing SpaceX spacecraft.

"I never would’ve guessed that I’d create an experiment that would go to space, much less in my senior year of high school," Josh told FOX 9 on Monday.

"We’re growing a plant in space. I mean, how many high schoolers can say that they’ve done that?" Grayson added.

This summer their brainchild will spend two weeks on board a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, after blasting off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center atop a Falcon 9 rocket. The news was announced last Friday after 180 teams in Edina competed for the lone spot representing Minnesota.

"Obviously I’ve never sent anything up into the space, so I’m trying to make it the best I can," Colin said.

The device is a seed holder intended to minimize vibrations from rockets and guide the roots of growing bean plants miles above the earth.

"It is needed because once we eventually fly into space we need food," Josh explained.

However, without gravity in space, growing plants need help figuring out which way is up and which way is down. That is where this device will come into play, for a new way to grow plants and the life-sustaining food that they provide.