BURGEONING scientists from St Laurence School's STEM club have been selected to take part in the Royal Horticultural Society’s (RHS) ‘Rocket Science’ experiment.

In September 2015 2kg of rocket seeds were launched to the International Space Station (ISS) along with Andreas Mogensen, where they spent several months in microgravity under the care of Tim Peake.

The seeds were returned to Earth with astronaut Scott Kelly on March 2, with the Bradford on Avon school is one of 10,000 schools across the UK that are part of the RHS and UK Space Agency project.

The school pupils received a packet of 100 seeds that had been in space and another that had not and now their task is to measure their growth of seven weeks.

Teacher Martin Edwards, who runs the STEM club, said: "It is a very exciting opportunity for students to see what people who work in STEM do, as well as get an idea as well as being able to help the UK Space Agency with their quest to be able to sustain humans in long term missions."

The RHS, along with the UK Space Agency have set up this opportunity with schools to help encourage more young people to enter into the world of STEM and horticulture.

This ‘out of this world’ experiment will help young people to think about how we could preserve human life on long term missions into space, as well as how to grow food in inhospitable climates, such as those found on other planets.

Schools will not know which packet contains which seeds, until all results have been collated and analysed by biostatisticians.

The findings will be released September 2016, and can be found on the RHS Campaign for School Gardening website.