Students in the Year 10 STEM - Advanced Science class are fortunate to be participating in a NASA-sponsored program called Growing Beyond Earth (GBE). It is an initiative designed to have students grow a variety of edible plants in a controlled environment for spaceflight. MLMC is one of only two schools in Australia to take part in the GBE project.
The class took delivery of the chamber used to grow plants from seed on Thursday 23 March with a run-down of what the project involves provided by Mr Ben Liu (Creative Producer, Learning and Participation, Programming and Audience Development from Royal Botanic Gardens), as well as Mrs Shelley Waldon (STEM and Science Leader from Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools). They are pictured above with some of our students and myself.
NASA's research criteria for the plant growing conditions includes; the randomness of plant location in the chamber, the intensity and type of light, as well as the length of time the plants receive light. The students will collect data on different crop types and growing techniques, and report the data to NASA scientists, and crops and approaches that work well in the classroom may then be tested at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida, USA.
Students in Semester 1 will be growing common garden variety basil and in Semester 2 we will be working with members of our local indigenous community to help select and grow an edible native plant. This is the first time in six years that the program will be trialled outside of the USA and our students are rightly very excited to be a part of an international citizen science project.
