NASA sent seeds into space for nearly 6 years; after they returned, 132,000 experiment kits reached 3.3 million students in 30 countries

In April 1984, NASA launched a satellite carrying 12.5 million tomato seeds into orbit to test how space radiation affects biological life. The mission was originally scheduled to last a single year. However, the tragic loss of the Space Shuttle Challenger grounded the fleet and stranded the payload in space. By the time astronauts finally recovered the satellite in 1990, the seeds had orbited the Earth over 32,000 times.