NeoCity Academy experiment part of Blue Origin's payload

While a lot of the space talk this weekend has been about the Artemis I launch rescheduled for Friday and how it should lead to sending astronauts back to the moon and eventually to Mars, Osceola County is part of other news coming out of the space program.

Per a Blue Origin release sent to local media partners by the Osceola County School District, a team of six students from NeoCity Academy created an experiment that will fly into the microgravity aboard the Blue Origin New Shepard's 23rd scheduled mission on Wednesday.

The launch window opens at 8:30 a.m. Central time (9:30 a.m. Eastern) from Blue Origin's Launch Site One in near Van Horn, Texas. It will carry 24 payloads from K-12 schools, universities, and STEM-focused organizations, including NeoCity Academy. It's three-minute experiment into microgravity will test the effects of gravity on ultrasonic sound waves. Investigating ultrasonic sound waves and their behavior in space could lead to further future discoveries about other types of waves.

Other academic and space-based groups sending payloads on the mission include the University of Florida, the NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center, Johns Hopkins University, the MIT Media Lab and Titan Space Technologies. For more, visit the Blue Origin release on NS-23, and check back with the News-Gazette and AroundOsceola.com for more details after Wednesday morning's launch!