The Aria-2 project is sponsored by Washington University in St. Louis' School of Engineering and Applied Science. Aria-2 engineering and manufacturing is the responsibility of more than twenty undergraduate Washington University students from a wide range of departments under the guidance of Keith Bennett, Ph.D,.afffiliate assistant professor of computer science, and Michael Swartwout, Ph.D. assistant professor of mechanical engineering. The project is co-sponsored by the St. Louis Area Junior Achivement who aided in the communication with the schools. Everything from rubber bands, yeast, glue, photographic negatives and a wide array of plant seeds will undergo the rigors of space and then be analyzed by students after the shuttle returns.
Participants range from elementary to high school seniors.
These K-12 students, under the guidance of their teachers, prepared hypotheses, designed experiments, collected the materials, prepare the flight articles, and will analyze the results after flight. After flight, students will compare the flight to the ground samples to determine effects caused by micro gravity, radiation, magnetism, and other possible circumstances experienced in a low earth orbit environment. The exact form of student organization and participation was under local school control. Some schools organized as clubs, others incorporated the effort into their curriculum. That project involved 300 St. Louis area K-12 students who brought together 45 different experiments.