Winnipeg students' science experiments are going to be out of this world

Science experiments created by students from two Winnipeg schools are blasting off into space.

The projects, developed by students from Grosvenor School and Wolseley School, are part of the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program. The program gives schools the chance to compete to have student-designed experiments chosen to go to the International Space Station.

Brandy Anderson's Grade 6 class at Grosvenor created five separate experiments looking at micro-gravity, and one — involving kale — was chosen to go to space.

"We worked up right until the deadline and they were troopers, they worked right through it," said Anderson of the project. "They worked really hard right up to the deadline and we submitted and it was pretty exciting just to even to complete them because it was a hard project.

"They did tremendous learning right through this project ... they were full-on scientists."

The experiment looks at how well Lacinato kale will grow in microgravity conditions with the hopes of one day letting astronauts on the space station grow their own kale in orbit.

"Kale has a lot of vitamins and is one of the healthiest vegetables, and Lacinato kale is one of the healthiest types of kales there is," explained Kale Peterson, one of the Grade 6 students at Grosvenor School behind the project. "They're doing our experiment in space and we're doing the exact same experiment on earth, and we're going to compare the results to see what the results of microgravity does to our experiment."

The winning project from Wolseley School looks at the effect microgravity has on yarrow seeds.

The experiments were selected from 87 projects submitted by students from 64 Winnipeg School Division elementary schools. After being picked by a local committee, a national review board picked the Wolseley and Grosvenor School experiments for spaceflight.

The students behind both schools' winning experiments get to go to Florida in the new year to watch their hard work get launched into space.