Space Project Blessed Native American Blessing Given To Shuttle Experiment

A traditional honor song and a cedar blessing have been given to the Shoshone-Bannock Junior-Senior High School’s science project, the first American Indian experiment headed to space.

The school assembly marked the last time students will see “Baby” before the liquid fertilizer experiment goes on a space shuttle this spring.

“It’s a historical week,” science teacher Ed Galindo said.

Baby left for Utah State University en route to the NASA site at Cape Canaveral, Fla., where it will be taken into orbit on the Space Shuttle Discovery on May 28.

He added that the project was named Baby because the students said they babied it so much, and he even buckled it in his car seat when he took it home. The project is three years in the making.

The honor song, sung by staff member Ernest Wahtomy, was for NASA’s selection of the school and project. The cedar blessing was for purification and to pray for the project’s safe journey.

Baby uses phosphate ore from the Gay Mine on the Fort Hall Reservation.

Future space travelers might need to mine phosphate from other planets to make fertilizer for growing or processing food during long trips.

The project will test how phosphate can be transformed into solution in space’s zero gravity environment.

Once in orbit, an astronaut will start the 30-minute experiment in which an electric motor-operated plate will push water from a medical plasma bladder into a series of plastic tubes and filters.

If all goes right, the system will mix the water and ore, an essential step in phosphate refining.