Space Seeds

They’ve finally arrived! We’re growing seeds from space!

Last year 2kg of rocket salad seeds were scheduled to leave Earth in a space shuttle on route to the International Space Station orbiting Earth. Unfortunately the shuttle had a problem and didn’t leave the launchpad.

Back in September 2015 a second, successful attempt was made and 2kg of rocket seeds were flown to the International Space Station (ISS) on Soyuz 44S where they spent six months in microgravity before returning to Earth in March 2016.

The seeds have been sent as part of Rocket Science, an educational research project launched by the RHS Campaign for School Gardening and the UK Space Agency.

This nationwide science research project will enable ESA (European Space Agency), RHS and others organisations to think more about how we could preserve human life on another planet in the future; what astronauts need to survive long-term missions in space; and the difficulties surrounding growing fresh food in challenging climates.

The research:

We’ve received a packet of 100 rocket seeds from space, which we will grow alongside our own 100 rocket seeds. During the next seven weeks we will observe their growth. At specified times we will measure and record the differences. We won’t know which seed packet contains which seeds until all the data has been collected by the RHS Campaign for School Gardening and analysed by professional biostatisticians for ESA and the UKSA.

7T, 7S1 and 7EC2 maths classes will be monitoring the experiment with Mrs Ludgate. They will be planting the seeds, observing, collecting the data and making their own predictions about how zero gravity may affect seeds.

The seeds were planted on Friday 22nd April using specific planting instructions according to the Rocket Science handbook. This ensures that every one of the participating schools and educational establishments undertake a fair test.

The experiment is taking place in B4 – updates will be posted on B4’s window.

Mrs L Ludgate