Pre Prep Chosen For Rocket Science Experiment

Bablake Pre Prep is excited to announce that it has been chosen to take part in the national 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 inspire pupils to think about how plants might grow in space. It will help them 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 that started in December.

The seeds will return to earth in April 2016 and Bablake 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 at Bablake will know which seeds have been to space and which have remained on Earth.

Pupils will care for the seedlings, record their growth and observations over 7 weeks and enter 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.

Bablake pupils and staff are all very excited about the opportunity and can't wait for the seeds to arrive!

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

• 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

• Follow on Twitter or Facebook: twitter.com/rhsschools  #RocketScience