Bright Beginnings have received their rocket seeds which have travelled all the way from the International Space Station!

Two kilograms of rocket (Eruca sativa) seeds were launched into space on 2nd September 2015, where they spent about six months in microgravity on the International Space Station (ISS), before returning to Earth in March 2016.

Bright Beginnings were lucky enough to be chosen to participate in the #RocketScience experiment and received a packet of 100 seeds that have been in space and 100 seeds that have remained on Earth. The seed packets were colour coded — a red packet and a blue packet — and we will not be told which packet contains which seeds until national results have been published – but we can make guesses based on the growth of the seeds!

The seeds were planted on 19th April and are on display in Playscheme, where we will observe their growth on a daily basis and record any differences between the seeds that came from the red packet and those that came from the blue packet. Seeds are labelled and colour coded so that we can tell which packet they came from and official data will be recorded by a small team of very enthusiastic staff and eventually be sent to scientists for analysis in June.

Parents are encouraged to visit our seeds with their children, where they can write or draw any observations into the ‘field journal’ floor book. For more information on the experiment, please take a look at the overview here!