EpiPens don’t work in space? NASA didn’t know — but Canadian students did
Global News
Canadian elementary school students made a remarkable discovery, which they will present to NASA this year, raising important questions for astronauts with allergies.
A group of gifted Canadian elementary school students has made a discovery that’s out of this world — EpiPens don’t work in space.
“It was pretty cool,” said student Hannah Thomson. “NASA didn’t know.”
Hannah is one of several students in grades four to six at St. Brother Andre Elementary School in Ottawa who are part of a NASA initiative called “Cubes in Space.”
The program helps children and teenagers around the world launch experiments aboard NASA rockets.
For their experiment, the students between the ages of nine and 11 focused on the EpiPen, a common medical tool found in classrooms across the country. The injection device is used to reverse the effects of life-threatening allergies.
The kids had a cosmic question: would an EpiPen still work in space?
“I thought it was brilliant,” said University of Ottawa chemist Paul Mayer, who helped analyze the group’s findings.
“The first part of doing science is asking the right questions and they asked a fantastic question.”