Voyage of space discovery for Rotherham youngsters

In September, 2kg 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 in March.

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.

Kiveton Park Meadows Junior 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 been to space and measure the differences over seven weeks.

The children will not know which seed packet contains which seeds until all results have been collected by the RHS Campaign for School Gardening and analysed by professional biostatisticians.

The out-of-this-world experiment will enable the children 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.

Year 5 teacher and science leader Neil Pacheco said: “We are very excited to be taking part in Rocket Science.

“This experiment is a fantastic way of teaching our children to think more scientifically and share their findings with the whole community.

“We would also like to involve children from our infant school to come and share in the experience of growing plants from seeds that have been in space.”

Rocket Science is just one educational project from a programme developed by the UK Space Agency to celebrate British ESA astronaut Tim Peake’s Principia mission to the ISS and inspire young people to look into careers in STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) subjects, including horticulture.

Other schools and educational groups can apply to take part at rhs.org.uk/schoolgardening.