Scientists try to cook up ways to grow plants in space stations
ET Bureau|
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Wheat on MIR, 1995
Super-dwarf wheat variety was planted in a growth chamber called Svet on the space station MIR. US astronaut John Blaha later harvested the first crop of healthy plants grown on Mir, according to NASA. A NASA project officer said the harvest showed that an important agricultural crop had successfully completed an entire life cycle in space.
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Red romaine lettuce, 2015
Crew members of Expedition 44 harvested — for the first time — space-grown red romaine lettuce heads, cleaned them with sanitising wipes and ate them raw before dressing the roughage with a bit of extra virgin olive oil and Italian balsamic vinegar. “Tastes good. Kinda like arugula,” said astronaut Scott Kelly.
International Space Station The station uses two systems for cultivation: Vegetable Production System or Veggie and Advanced Plant Habitat.
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Zucchini, 2012
Zucchini was officially grown in space in 2012 in a plastic bag and nutrient solution.
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Flowering plant on Salyut 7, 1982
The first plant to flourish in space was an Arabidopsis thaliana, a spindly plant with white flowers. Though it is not a food source, the plant species has a fairly quick life cycle that allows for many analyses.
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Rice on Skylab, 1973
Donald Schlack and Joel Wordekemper, high-schoolers from US, studied rice seeds that were planted and grown on Skylab. The plants were seeded on the space station by astronaut Edward Gibson, making him “the first space farmer.” The rice grew pretty weirdly, first taking longer than usual to get started, and then the stems growing and stretching into odd directions — sometimes even away from the light.
Other plants grown on ISS include three types of lettuce, Chinese cabbage, mizuna mustard, red Russian kale and zinnia flowers. Some of the plants were harvested and eaten by the crew members.
(In pic: Astronaut Scott Kelly’s photo of zinnias taken onboard the ISS in 2016.)
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Next up: Fruit
Now, NASA wants to grow Española chili pepper plants (Capsicum annuum) on space. This would make it the first fruit to be grown in space by US astronauts. The pepper is rich in Vitamin C and will help astronauts fight cold.
