Salado Space Team is a group of approximately 160 students that engage in authentic microgravity research projects, mentorship from academia, government, and industry, international classroom collaborations, and STEM related field trip experiences.  

Salado students and teacher Laura Tomlin were selected in 2021 as one of four schools nationwide to participate in the ZERO-G Embedded Teacher program through NASA's Wisconsin Space Grant Consortium.  The ETP is a student designed, student built, and teacher-flown research program, in which the student research is tested in weightlessness on-board G-Force One.  Since 2021, Ms. Tomlin has flown student research on four parabolic flights, with additional flights scheduled for 2023 and 2024.  

The next step is to extend our program by flying automated student payload experiments on suborbital and orbital rockets, and eventually to the International Space Station. 

Laura Tomlin is a STEM and science teacher at Salado Middle School in central Texas.  She is a ZERO-G flight mentor for the Embedded Teacher Program where she leads microgravity workshops and mentors educators prior to and during parabolic flight. 

Laura is a founding member of Space for Teachers (SfT), a non-profit committed to bringing immersive research opportunities to educators and their classrooms.  She is also an International Teacher Liaison for the Space Foundation, U.S. Ambassador to One Giant Leap, Australia, and Space Station Explorer Ambassador.