When SpaceX 32 launches at 4:15 AM on April 21, 2025, from Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Fla., bound for the International Space Station (ISS), a Butler University senior will be on hand with a personal stake in the mission. 

Thomas Chandler, a Psychology major at Butler, has spent the past year working alongside Organic Chemistry Professor Dr. Anne Wilson and a team of scientists from Redwire Space on a unique experiment: testing whether gold nanospheres can grow in size when formed in microgravity. 

Gold nanospheres—tiny, spherical particles ranging from 1 to 100 nanometers in diameter (a nanometer is one-billionth of a meter)—have a wide range of applications. They’re used in medical diagnostics, cancer treatment, drug delivery, biomedical imaging, and environmental sensing. If you’ve ever taken a pregnancy or COVID-19 test, you’ve encountered gold nanospheres in action. 

“Dr. Wilson and I have been talking about materials from this project going into orbit for synthesis for well over a year now so it’s really exciting to see the work pay off,” Chandler said. “It’s not something that I thought I would get to experience while at Butler—or really ever—but it’s certainly one of the most unique and special opportunities that I’ve ever had. I am beyond thankful that I have gotten to be a part of such a meaningful project as an undergrad.” 

The experiment is being delivered to the International Space Station aboard SpaceX 32 and will test the hypothesis that these particles can grow larger when synthesized in the low-gravity environment of space. 

This marks the third time in the past year that an experiment originating in a Butler University science lab has traveled to the ISS. Previous launches in April and September 2024 carried experiments involving crystal growth — exploring whether pharmaceutical compounds could be grown into larger, more perfect, and more usable crystal forms in space. The results, according to Wilson, were promising. 

“Some of the crystals produced in space had different forms than those we grow on Earth,” she said. “These different forms may be more soluble in the body, which means drug manufacturers could potentially produce medications in lower doses while achieving the same effect. Plus,” she added with a smile, “the crystals were really stinking pretty!” 

Butler’s growing partnership with Redwire Space— a predominantly engineering group which operates a facility in Greenville, Indiana—stemmed from Wilson’s connection with a former graduate student colleague now working in the industry. 

“They needed appropriate lab space to do wet science and a researcher to do the work, and so they contacted me,” Wilson said. “We were excited to help, and it’s turned into something really special. The collaboration gives our students access to remarkable hands-on opportunities—and it’s exciting to see an all-Indiana team contributing to NASA-funded space research.”