THESE young pupils are simply out of this world.

Youngsters from Carmyle Primary are preparing to become space biologists by growing seeds that have flown to the International Space Station (ISS).

They are taking part in the Rocket Seeds project that will see them plant the seeds every day in April 2016 to see how they grow.

Karen Sallis, ICT coordinator at the school, has been in charge of running a year-long space project in Carmyle Primary.

She said: "We signed up to the year-long Tim Peake education programme - he is the first British astronaut to go to space under the European space agency and first Brit to live and work on the international space station.

"The pupils have loved it as it's something a wee bit different, they've really embraced it.

"When we had real meteorites on loan at and the school the pupils couldn't quite believe they were holding in their hand something that had been in out of space. I'm sure it will be the same with the rocket seeds."

In September, 2kg of rocket seeds were flown to the ISS on Soyuz 44S where they will spend several months in microgravity before returning to Earth in March 2016.

The seeds have been sent as part of Rocket Science, an educational project launched by the RHS Campaign for School Gardening and the UK Space Agency.

Carmyle Primary will receive a packet of 100 seeds from space, which they will grow alongside seeds that haven’t been to space and measure the differences over seven weeks.

The pupils won’t know which seed packet contains which seeds until all results have been collected by the RHS Campaign for School Gardening and analysed by professional biostatisticians.

The nationwide science experiment will enable the pupils to think more about how we could preserve human life on another planet in the future, what astronauts need to survive long-term missions in space and the difficulties surrounding growing fresh food in challenging climates.

Rocket Science is just one educational project from a programme developed by the UK Space Agency to celebrate British ESA astronaut Tim Peake’s Principia mission to the ISS and inspire young people to look into careers in STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) subjects, including horticulture.

Mrs Sallis added: "The Royal Observatory in Edinburgh came out to make rockets ,which were launched using a timed device outside - some are still on our roof.

"We've had a lot of fun this year and taken part in a lot of different projects."