Mansfield Museum is over the moon after being selected to take part in the Rocket Science project launched by the Royal Horticultural Society Campaign for School Gardening and the United Kingdom Space Agency.

In September 2015, 2kg of rocket seeds were flown to the International Space Station (ISS) on Soyuz 44S to spend several months in space, before being returned to Earth in March 2016.

Along with 10,000 schools across the UK, Mansfield Museum will receive a packet of 100 seeds from space, which they will grow alongside seeds that haven’t been to space and measure the differences over a period of seven weeks.

The museum will not know which seed packet contains which seeds until all the results have been collected by the RHS Campaign for School Gardening and analysed by professional biostatisticians.

The council-run museum will be growing and exhibiting the seeds in its Leeming Street arcade, where visiting school children and other visitors will be able to get involved with the measuring and monitoring of the experiment.

The out-of-this world, nationwide science project will enable children and residents in Mansfield to think more about how we could preserve human life on another planet in the future, what astronauts need to survive 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 European Space Agency astronaut Tim Peake’s Principia mission to the ISS and inspire young people to look into careers in science, technology, engineering and maths subjects, as well as horticulture.

Portfolio Holder for Cultural Services, Town and District Centres, Cllr David Smith said: “We are on top of the world that Mansfield Museum will be taking part in Rocket Science. This fantastic experiment will encourage all our visitors to engage with science and think more about the challenges of growing food. As a keen gardener myself, I am looking forward to sharing the findings of this project.”