Seeds of Australia’s national floral emblem, the Golden Wattle, were launched into space in December 2020 for a seven month journey as part of the ground-breaking ‘What’ll Happen to the Wattle??!’ program.
The ‘What’ll happen to the Wattle’ program is a collaboration between the One Giant Leap Foundation, the Australian Space Agency and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).
The Golden Wattle seeds called the International Space Station ‘home’ until their return to Earth in July.
Since then, the seeds have been distributed to more than 300 locations around Australia to grow, with data about the plants uploaded to the What’ll Happen to the Wattle app.
These locations include schools and community groups, where participants will engage in a range of experiments with the seeds, and will interact with one another and the three agencies in a series of webinars, teleconferences and other gatherings.
The decision to send our national floral emblem into space was an easy one for the One Giant Leap Foundation, says Director of the foundation Jackie Carpenter.
“…How to engage the whole country and encourage imagination and creativity? It had to be the Golden Wattle! The green and gold! The project would be steeped in meaning for everyone. The symbolism of surviving drought, wind, bushfire – resilience.”
Interestingly, this isn’t the maiden voyage into space for the Golden Wattle. In 2008, Dr Gregory Chamitoff, the patron of the One Giant Leap Foundation, took some seeds with him into space.
Follow along with the progress of the seeds from space on the What’ll Happen to the Wattle website.
Learn more about Australia’s National Symbols using the educational resources on our website.