Shelton High students watch as their space shuttle experiment blasts off

High school students from Shelton watched their own experiment launch into space on Tuesday, a rare opportunity that underscores how access to space has begun trickling down from NASA astronauts to suburban classrooms. The student-designed project, selected from hundreds of submissions, will conduct research in orbit before returning to Earth, giving teenagers direct stake in a domain once reserved for elite engineers and government agencies. For a generation growing up in an era of commercial spaceflight and democratized STEM education, it's a tangible reminder that the final frontier is becoming less final.

Greenwich Time·May 16