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ESA's Human Spaceflight & Operations directorate's promotion office is responsible for the ISS related educational programs at ESA. The main goal is to encourage young people across Europe to gain and maintain an interest in science and technology, in addition to inspire them to pursue an education within these fields. The target group is youngsters at age 6 -18 years. Since the installation of the Columbus module on the International Space Station (ISS), ESA astronauts have carried out numerous educational experiments. However, very few of the educational payloads include biology. The purpose of this paper is to describe one plant biology payload, ESA Education Payload Operations (EPO) Greenhouse, and to reflect on some of the challenges preparing an educational biology payload on ISS. The educational yield of experiment is briefly outlined and lessons learned from the project preparation campaign are discussed. The operations of the payload were supported by the Norwegian User Support Centre (N-USOC). The paper focuses on the preparation phase of a 15-week in-flight operational scenario and challenges encountered during the preliminary dry-runs. In addition to follow the inflight experiment, school children also themselves grew plants using similar Greenhouse kits provided by ESA. They compared their observations with the on-orbit seedlings growth. The astronaut onboard regularly hydrated both Greenhouses and document the plants growth by photography. In February 2011 the first on-orbit Greenhouse watering event was broadcasted simultaneously to museums and science centers around Europe. Even though the project was terminated before its planned duration, a number of purposes of the experiment were achieved. In the paper we describe several positive experiences gained. N-USOC = Norwegian User and Operations Centre ISS = International Space station EPO = Education Payload Operation COL-CC = Columbus Control Centre PD PI = Principle Investigator = Payload Developer EST = Experiment Sequence Test PTR = Post Test Review 1 EPO Greenhouse Exam, Norwegian USOC, Suzanne.overlie@ciris.no

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