Rocket Seeds

Blast off!

You may remember that we are registered to grow seeds that have been to space, well the RHS wanted to share some exciting news with you. They can now confirm that their rocket seeds are due to launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida at 15:21pm BST (British Standard Time) this Sunday 28 June on the SpaceX-7 flight.

Assuming the launch time doesn’t change, you can watch coverage of the launch from 14:00pm via the NASA TV website here.http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/

Once the Dragon capsule (with the rocket seeds inside) gets into space and starts orbiting the Earth, it will take a couple of days to make sure that all of its components are working correctly, before then firing it’s engines a few times to change its orbit and catch up with the International Space Station (ISS).

The Dragon capsule will approach the station in a carefully choreographed space dance called ‘rendezvous’. The astronauts inside the space station will control the giant robotic arm, called Canadarm2, and grab, or ‘grapple’, the Dragon capsule. If the launch goes ahead on time, and there are no other problems, the capsule should arrive at the ISS on Tuesday 30 June, with coverage starting on NASA TV at 10:30am BST. 

Once the capsule has been safely attached to the ISS, the crew will finally open the hatches between the ISS and the Dragon capsule on the same or following day to unload the cargo which includes their seeds!

Much of the footage will be made available on YouTube to watch after Sunday.

They will be tweeting about the launch from @RHSSchools so please join in the conversation.
Also keep an eye on @spacegovuk (UK Space Agency), @NASA and @SpaceX for more.