A Pinellas County student whose Take Stock in Children mentor helped him through a difficult stretch in high school is now part of a University of Central Florida research team sending a kidney stone experiment to the International Space Station this fall.

Matthew McMenamin, a UCF astrophysics senior who grew up in the Palm Harbor-Dunedin area, joined the Take Stock in Children mentoring program as a middle schooler through the Pinellas Education Foundation. By high school, personal challenges made it hard for him to focus, even in his favorite subjects: math and physics. His mentor provided consistent encouragement during that period, and McMenamin told the foundation she was the most influential part of the program beyond the scholarship itself.

That support helped him graduate and enroll at UCF, where he discovered the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program at an informational meeting that drew only about 10 students. His first reaction, he said, was that it seemed like a scam.

It wasn't.

UCF team's kidney stone crystal study beat out 441 proposals for ISS flight

McMenamin joined a research team studying how kidney stones form in microgravity, a real concern for astronauts on long-duration missions. When astronauts lose bone mass in reduced gravity, the released calcium passes through the kidneys and can form painful stones.

The UCF team's experiment, titled "A Kidney Stone in Microgravity," was selected from 441 proposals submitted by student teams across 20 communities participating in SSEP Mission 21. The experiment involves both students on Earth and astronauts aboard the ISS shaking tubes containing the building blocks of a kidney stone over two weeks, then examining the crystals that form.

The team's co-principal investigators are Andrei Nesterenko, Sammi Jones and Reese Laushot, with faculty advisers Philip Metzger and Amy Gregory. Metzger told UCF's student newspaper the students "worked on this for weeks and weeks and weeks."

Launch targeted for October, with splashdown off Florida coast

The experiment is scheduled to launch aboard SpaceX-35, with the SSEP program listing a target date of no earlier than October 2026. The payload will spend four to six weeks on the station before splashing down, likely off the Florida coast.

"I am most excited to hold something that was in space," McMenamin told the foundation. "I'm actively contributing to the understanding of things outside of our planet."

Hurricane-watching childhood in Palm Harbor sparked a lifelong fascination with the sky

The kid who grew up watching hurricanes roll in from his porch with his dad, tracking storms on radar and celebrating with Publix hurricane cakes, now spends nights photographing the sky through his telescope and challenges friends to solve math problems on whiteboards throughout his house.

Mentoring program awarded nearly $900,000 in scholarships last year

Take Stock in Children, operated locally by the Pinellas Education Foundation, served 1,031 students last year and awarded $891,338 in scholarships to graduating seniors in the 2024-25 school year. Students who maintain a 2.0 GPA, meet regularly with a mentor and remain drug- and crime-free receive at minimum a two-year Florida Prepaid Scholarship upon graduation. Residents interested in volunteering as mentors can learn more at pinellaseducation.org.

The SSEP Mission 21 launch is expected no earlier than October 2026, with the experiment returning to Earth by late fall.