Colyton Grammar School students set to cultivate seeds from space
Budding astrobiologists at Colyton Grammar School are boldly going on a voyage of discovery - growing seeds that have been into space.
Last September, two kilogrammes of rocket seeds were flown to the International Space Station (ISS) on Soyuz 44S, where they will spend several months in microgravity before returning to Earth next month. The seeds have been sent as part of Rocket Science, an educational project launched by the RHS Campaign for School Gardening and the UK Space Agency.
Colyton Grammar School will be one of up to 10,000 schools to receive a packet of 100 seeds from space, which they will grow alongside seeds that have not left Earth’s atmosphere and measure the differences over seven weeks.
The students will not know which seed packet contains which seeds until all results have been collected by the RHS Campaign for School Gardening and analysed. The experiment will enable students to consider how to preserve human life on another planet, what astronauts need to survive long-term missions and the difficulties of growing fresh food in challenging climates.
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