"Yay," said fellow rising seventh-grader Mary Brooke Mooneyham.
That's after the two learned on Friday in a special ceremony at the school that sodium polyacrylate can be used in space for seed germination and plant growth. ... What?
No one would get excited about that, unless you can learn it by chance in a unique and special way.
Garrick and Mooneyham, along with fellow sixth-grade scientists from the school, Alyse King and Ashlin Farmer, were able to do just that after being selected in January for a student spaceflight experiments program to the International Space Station.
The National Center for Earth and Space Science Education, which is staffed with professional scientists and engineers in Washington, D.C., spearheads the program and selects a limited number of schools to participate in the spaceflight experiments program every two years.
The all-girl team from Alice Drive Middle was a group from one of only 31 schools and colleges in the U.S., Canada and Brazil that were selected last school year for the program.
In June, Mission 12 spaceflight astronauts had liftoff from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and took the team's experiment - sealed in a test tube - with instructions provided to the International Space Station, where they performed it for the Sumter students during the summer.