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Exciting Science News
Last summer Katie got very excited when listening to the BBC News interviewing British Astronaut, Tim Peake. He explained that the Royal Horticultural Society had teamed up with the British Space programme to run a huge school experiment involving seeds that had spent some time up in space. This is a link to the Rocket Science website - https://schoolgardening.rhs.org.uk/news/News-results/National/2015/May/rocket-science.
The first attempt at sending the seeds up to the International Space station (ISS), in June, ended in disaster because the supply rocket blew up. Luckily the rocket was unmanned. Katie explained how she watched the launch live on NASA TV and thus watched the rocket blow up as well and heard those infamous words, "Houston we have a malfunction!" In fact a huge chunk of this rocket has now been found floating in the sea near to the Scilly Isles.
Luckily a new batch of seeds hitched a ride on the next ISS supply rocket which made it safely in September.
The seeds will spend 6 months in zero gravity and then after arriving back on Earth they will be sent out to schools for the great experiment in March 2016. The schools, The Ladies' College being one of them, will not know which seeds have been in space and which stayed on Earth. This is called a double blind experiment. Over 10,000 samples will be grown under identical conditions and provide a huge number of results for the RHS scientists to analyse. Here is the video of Tim Peake asking for the help of the general public - https://www.gov.uk/government/news/rocket-science-turning-uk-children-into-space-biologists.
I asked Katie to make some predictions about what she thinks may happen.
"In space scientists have had huge problems getting seeds to grow and they need extra water fertilizer and of course natural light is fairly scarce. This data may suggest the rocket seeds won't grow or need more water as they will have dried out. Of course, they may just grow normally and that would be the best result for future space travel."
The Biology Society committee, consisting of L6 girls, will be coordinating this experiment when the seeds arrive and they hope that lots of Ladies' College girls from all years will want to come and help. This experiment will help future astronauts on their journey to Mars because growing your own food may be necessary as it will be difficult to take enough food with you for a journey that could last more than a year.
Dr K Marshall
Head of Science, Head of Chemistry
For more news from The Ladies' College Science Department go here:
/our-school/senior-school/academic-departments/science
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