An experiment designed by a group of students from UCCS and Pikes Peak State College was selected to go to the International Space Station. 

The experiment will test the process of bioleaching in microgravity, according to UCCS physics major Joe Bate. Bate is one of five students working on the team.  

Bioleaching involves exposing metal to fungi. The fungi dissolve and absorb the metal, which can then be extracted and reused. The experiment aims to test the efficiency of bioleaching in an environment with lower gravity than Earth, according to Bate. The experiment will make the journey to the ISS in early 2026. 

Bate said he hopes the findings of the experiment can be used long term to create self-sustaining metal recycling bases on the moon and Mars. 

“If [bioleaching] can work better in low gravity environments, that would be a huge advantage comparative to smelting,” Bate said. “Which requires a ton of energy that is hard to obtain when you’re on another planetary body where you don’t have those resources and infrastructure set up to run that operation.”  

He noted that this process could be used to harvest heavy metals from planetary bodies, like the asteroid belt, and reduce harmful mining practices on Earth. 

“If we could shift our focus, the resources that we fight for over here on Earth are such finite resources, but out in space, they’re almost infinite.” 

A priority for the long-term goals of the project is implementing phases of the experiment on other terrestrial bodies as sustainably as possible, according to Bate. 

“We should have learned our lessons here on Earth with how we do things, and I hope that lesson learned would be carried on when we start trying to occupy other planetary bodies so as not to disrupt ecosystems and ecology there,” Bate said. 

In addition to Bate, there is a chemistry major, a biology major and two aerospace engineering majors on the team. “With collaboration between multiple fields is the only way that [the experiment] happened,” Bate said. 

The bioleaching experiment was one of 14 proposals submitted to a Colorado-wide competition hosted by Lynnane George, associate professor from the UCCS department of mechanical and aerospace engineering, and McKenna Lovejoy, department chair of engineering for PPSC. Proposals were submitted from students from universities across Colorado including UCCS, PPSC, CU Boulder and CSU Pueblo. 

George and Lovejoy picked the top three proposals to send to the Student Spaceflights Experiment Program (SSEP). This year, SSEP received 1280 proposals from 4-year institutions across the country. Of those proposals, 21 were picked to go to the ISS. Each experiment is required to fund their own trip, and the bioleaching fungi experiment was funded equally by PPSC and the College of Engineering, according to George.  

This is the second year in a row that a team of UCCS and PPSC students were selected for SSEP. In 2024, an experiment testing crystal growth rates in space was selected for the program. The experiment was designed by two UCCS students and a PPSC student. 

“I think it’s amazing that students at the undergraduate level can actually say they launched something on the ISS,” George said. “That is a unique once in a lifetime experience.”  

The International Space Station. Photo courtesy of NASA.