Students from the Schenectady and Guilderland school districts in New York collected seeds for an experiment that flew inside the Space Experiment Module in Space Shuttle Columbia's payload bay during STS-107. The seeds are representative of wildflowers from the unique and sensitive land area of the nearby Albany Pine Bush Preserve. After the mission, they will be returned to the students, who will plant them and study their development. The students hypothesize that there will be measurable differences in growth of plants from the STS-107 seeds, compared with plants grown from control seeds that did not go to space. These differences may include germination period, size of plant, number of petals, shape of leaves and color variations.

Plants grown from the "space" seeds will be donated to Schenectady's Central Park Gardens, and some will be returned to the Albany Pine Bush Preserve to help with restoration of the native plant population.

Read more about the Space Experiment Module experiments.