Rostrevor Magazine 2020-2021

Rostrevor Magazine 2020 - 2021 / Page 39 When Year 5 students from Rostrevor College were invited by the Australian and Japanese space agencies to be part of an exciting program to grow wattle seeds that have spent six months in space, they launched into action. The 10 and 11-year-olds produced a video showing their great interest in space, science and horticulture and convinced the One Giant Leap Australia Foundation that they would be great custodians of the “Space Wattles”. In December, they watched the SpaceX Falcon 9 Dragon launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida carrying a precious cargo of golden wattle seeds from Canberra’s Seed Bank which will spend the next six months on the International Space Station. The mission is a collaboration between NASA, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and the Australian Space Agency and aims to return the seeds to Earth in time for Science Week 2021. The Rostrevor students will then plant the “space seeds” inside specially-designed greenhouses, alongside seeds from the same batch that have remained on Earth. They will record data about the germination and plant growth and upload that data to the “What’ll happen to the wattle?” app. Year 5 student Marcus Hopgood said he never thought he’d have the opportunity to touch something that had spent time in space. “It is good to have young people like us involved because we are interested in seeing what happens to the seeds and because we will be here in future years to keep the project going,” Marcus said. “We already know that astronauts that have been in space for a long time need to exercise to stop their bones getting weak, so perhaps something like that could happen to the seeds and affect their growth in some way.” Sowing the Seeds of Scientific Discovery The seeds have already taken quite a journey, having been sealed, labelled, subjected to biosecurity provisions and formally handed over to JAXA by the Australian Consul General in Toyko in September ahead of their journey to the Kennedy Space Station last month. The educational component of the program has been developed by One Giant Leap Australia Foundation which will run teleconferences and provide educational support to participating groups around Australia. Once grown, the plants, which can also be found naturally on the Rostrevor campus, will be transferred to a dedicated site along Rostrevor College’s Native Plant Trail. The 12-month to two year project will result in the creation of a nationwide map identifying the location of Australia‘s “Space Wattle” trees.