We have just found out that our application for some ‘space seeds’ has been successful and we will be taking part in the Royal Horticultural Society’s Rocket Science Experiment!

The RHS Rocket Science project, in partnership with the UK Space Agency, is a UK wide experiment and a fun, interactive way to get us thinking about how plants might grow in space. We hope it will help us understand the difficulties of living, growing and eating in space.

In September, 2kg of rocket seeds were flown to the International Space Station on Soyuz 44S. The seeds will be held in microgravity for 6 months with British ESA astronaut Tim Peake taking charge of them while on the ISS for his Principia mission starting in December.

The seeds will return to earth in April 2016 and Kirkhill Primary School (P6) will be one of 10,000 schools to receive 100 seeds from space. These will be grown alongside seeds that have not been to space to see if there are any differences in growth. No one in our class will know which seeds have been to space and which have remained on Earth!

We will have to care for our seedlings, record their growth and make observations over 7 weeks.  We will then have to carefully enter all our data into a database. After all the data has been collected, the results will be analysed by professional statisticians. Leading scientists from the RHS and European Space Agency will interpret the results and draw possible conclusions, publishing their results on the RHS Campaign for School Gardening website.

We are very excited to be chosen to participate – it is such a great opportunity!  We can not only share our learning with the school community but can also contribute to a national experiment.  It’s a great way to become involved in growing plants (we will hopefully be growing some veg as part of our Highland Clearances topic – to make some soup, yum!) as well as expanding our knowledge of STEM subjects.

If you would like to know more about Rocket Science before the seeds arrive at Kirkhill PS, you can:

• Visit the RHS Rocket Science Webpage
  https://schoolgardening.rhs.org.uk/Competitions/Rocket-Science-Experiment-Overview
• Track the ISS online http://spotthestation.nasa.gov/sightings/#.VgLAf8tVhBc
• Watch a video of the rocket launch that delivered our seeds to the ISS:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9R7-gWKZZsg