Thame students grow rocket seeds from space!

STUDENTS at Lord Williams’s Lower School have become space biologists and embarked on a voyage of discovery by growing seeds that have been into space.

In September, 2kg of rocket seeds were flown to the International Space Station (ISS) on Soyuz 44S where they spent several months in microgravity before returning to Earth last month. The seeds were sent as part of Rocket Science, an educational project launched by the RHS Campaign for School Gardening and the UK Space Agency.

Lord Williams’s School is one of the participating schools to receive a packet of 100 seeds from space, which are being grown alongside seeds that haven’t been to space and the differences measured over a period of six 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 by professional biostatisticians.

The out-of-this-world, nationwide science experiment will enable the students 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 Rocket seeds were sown after school on Tuesday, April 19, and already they are showing signs of germination. Each seedling has a letter and number code. Over the next six weeks the students will be responsible for checking and watering the seedlings as well as taking measurements such as growth, leaf count and plant height at frequent intervals.

Mr Bill Zahariadis, Joint KS3 Team Leader Science, says: “We are very excited to be taking part in Rocket Science. This experiment is a fantastic way of teaching our students to think more scientifically and share their findings with the whole school.”

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.

Follow the project on Twitter: @RHSSchools #RocketScience