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Project is out of this world
St Charles’ Primary are set to boldly go where no school pupils have gone before.
They are taking part in a new project where they’ll be growing seeds that have previously been into outer space.
And the Cambuslang school will now have their very own space race, as they will compare the seeds from space with those that have not been away over several weeks.
It’s all part of the educational project Rocket Science, which has been launched by the RHS Campaign for School Gardening and the UK Space Agency.
In September, 2kg of rocket seeds were flown to the International Space Station (ISS) on Soyuz 44S.
They have spent several months in microgravity, and are returning to Earth this month.
St Charles’ youngsters will be given a packet of 100 seeds from space, along with seeds that haven’t been to space, and they won’t be told which packet is which.
Then they will be measuring the differences between the seeds, with final data being analysed by professional biostatisticians.
St Charles’ teacher Rose Hewitt thinks the idea has several benefits for the kids.
She said: “We are very excited to be taking part in Rocket Science.
“This experiment is a fantastic way of teaching our pupils to think more scientifically and share their findings with the whole school.
The Gardening Club will be running this experiment and sharing their findings with the whole school at assembly.”
Among the areas the project will cover are enabling the children to think more about how we could preserve human life on another planet in the future, what astronauts need to survive while on long-term missions in space and the difficulties surrounding growing fresh food in challenging climates.
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.