Monkey Puzzle Day Nursery, Southport children, parents and staff were all intently huddled around laptops and tablets on Sunday 28th June at 3.21pm waiting for lift off of the SpaceX-7 rocket flight.
Well, the Southport day nursery had joined up to the Royal Horticultural Society’s Campaign for School Gardening, part of which involved sending a selection of rocket seeds to the International Space Station for planting.
How exciting is that!
The RHS Campaign For School Gardening was created to inspire and support schools to provide children with gardening opportunities to enhance their their skills and boost development.
The rocket seed experiment was intended to compare how space effects the seeds compared to those identical seeds that remain on earth.
The rocket blasted off on schedule but just two and a half minutes into its galactic journey things started to go wrong.
The unmanned Falcon 9 rocket suffered a catastrophic failure destroying the Dragon capsule holding our seeds and all its other precious cargo.
But we are still hopeful after discussions between the RHS and the European Space Agency confirmed that they were to find another launch opportunity as soon as possible.
While everyone at Monkey Puzzle Southport were disappointed, it has not dampened the children’s enthusiasm for gardening and expect them to be gathered round their computers once more in the not too distant future.