Three pounds of Domino Sugar will head to space on Wednesday.
The Baltimore refinery and a sister refinery, C&H Sugar in California, are each providing sugar for a cargo delivery flight to the International Space Station aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, Domino Sugar announced Monday.
No, the orbiting astronauts aren’t whipping up a batch of sugar cookies for Christmas. They will use the sugar to grow crystallized rock candy in zero-gravity, while students — including some at Francis Scott Key Elementary/Middle School in Locust Point — grow it on Earth and compare their progress.
The Crystal Growth Experiment, as the interactive science project is known, was designed by DreamUp, NanoRacks and Xtronaut, which develop space-related science, technology, engineering and math programs for schools.
The rock candy experiment teaches students about the scientific processes of nucleation and crystallization, in which sugar molecules in a saturated solution — usually water — bond together and grow into the hard candy treat.
Read more at the Baltimore Sun
