Invasion of the Space Tomatoes : Science: Irvine students cheer when they learn that some seeds from a retrieved satellite will be coming to their elementary school.

IRVINE--Inside Nancy Atlee’s classroom at Turtle Rock Elementary School on Friday, dozens of students sat riveted to a television news broadcast on the space shuttle Columbia.

To many of these fourth- and fifth-graders, the high-tech drama of Columbia’s rescue of an old science satellite--dubbed an LDEF for Long Duration Exposure Facility--took on an added dimension when they learned that they and other schoolchildren across the country may soon be getting a part of the LDEF’S cargo.

Science teacher Robin Van Vorhis said it may change the students’ taste for, or at least their opinions of, the tomato plant.

“When NASA first put the satellite into orbit in 1984, they put 50 pounds of tomato seeds on board as part of an experiment on weightlessness and gravity,” Van Vorhis explained.

When she told students that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration plans to send some of these space seeds to their school to grow as experiments, Preston Kuo, 11, and other students screamed in unison, “Cool.”

“My dad is interested in the space program,” Preston said, “He watches TV a lot. I think these tomato seeds might grow differently because they’ve been in space and, like, have vines going off in different directions.”

“I don’t think so,” said Ruth Murray, 10. “I think it might grow a little faster or not at all, or maybe deformed.”

Mark Overdevest, 11, disagreed. “They’re going to be strange, like purple or something. Or white.”

Although this is the generation of video telephones and robot toys, the idea of eating space tomatoes was, well, uncool, according to student Kevin Groh.

“Yuck! They’re probably going to taste tart, like stale yogurt or something.”

Three years ago, science specialists in the Irvine Unified School District notified NASA, which had queried various schools in the country, that they would like to participate in the seed project, Vincent Sipkovich, a science teacher, said.

The LDEF was launched in April, 1984, from the shuttle Challenger to document the wear and tear of space travel on what was supposed to be a 10-month flight. But a series of delays, including the Challenger explosion in 1986, forced the recovery on Friday, which averted the satellite’s fiery plunge to Earth.

“NASA told us that although the space shuttle retrieved the satellite today (Friday), we probably won’t be receiving the seeds for another month,” Sipkovich said.

The idea is to have the district’s 15 science specialists plant the well-traveled tomato seeds side-by-side with normal seeds as part of an experiment, he said.

“Then we can check to see if their growth differs from regular normal seeds,” Sipkovich said.

Whether the space seeds survived was not known Friday. The LDEF had faced deep space during its 32,422-orbit, 854-million-mile journey. Hit by space debris, the covers on at least two of satellite’s 57 experiments were “flapping in the breeze,” NASA officials said.

However, the rendezvous between the satellite and Columbia, which required a series of rocket firings over three days to align the space shuttle with the LDEF, “went famously,” said flight director Granvil Pennington. “It looks like we’ve got an important piece of science in our grasp,” he said.

As for the students at Turtle Rock, at least one said he was eager to get his hands on a piece of the space program.

“But maybe I’ll put gloves on . . . just in case,” said young Overdevest.