That's what NASA had in mind, I guess. The grant money is supporting myriad projects like Snyder's. One of the graduate fellows goes to Spanish-speaking classrooms, gives a talk on climate change, and recruits interested students to visit the UA campus to learn more. Another part of the program includes helping UA students design parts of a satellite. It's a real heterogeneous program.
Space is interpreted broadly.
It includes not only astronomy, planetary sciences, physics and those disciplines you would think of as being space related, but also it branches into a lot of the Earth and environmental fields with NASA's earth sciences focus. NASA has a strong interest in Earth as a planetary system. The gauges, nitrogen tank and pressure lines all seem very bewildering to the seventh and eighth graders on today's trip. By cutting a stem and placing it under pressure from the tank, Snyder can determine how tightly the plant cells are holding the water. The more pressure required to extract the water, the more stressed the plant is from dehydration.