Flowers Harvested on the Ground and in Space for Deep-Space Food Crop Research
Chuck Spern, a project engineer with Vencore on the Engineering Services Contract, removes a base tray containing zinnias from a controlled environment chamber in the Space Station Processing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Zinnia plants from the Veggie ground control experiment at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida were harvested Feb. 11 in the same way that crew member Scott Kelly harvested the zinnias growing in the Veggie system aboard the International Space Station on Feb. 14—Valentine’s Day.
Flowering plants will help scientists learn more about growing crops for deep-space missions and NASA’s journey to Mars.
Image Credit: NASA/Bill White
Last Updated: Feb. 16, 2016
Editor: Steve Fox
By Linda Herridge
NASA's John F. Kennedy Space Center
NASA's John F. Kennedy Space Center
Zinnia plants from the Veggie ground control system are being harvested in the Flight Equipment Development Laboratory in the Space Station Processing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. From left, are John Carver, an integration engineer with Jacobs on the Test and Operations Support Contract, and Chuck Spern, a project engineer with Vencore on the Engineering Services Contract. A similar zinnia harvest will be conducted by astronaut Scott Kelly on the International Space Station. Photo credit: NASA/Bill White
Zinnia plants from the Veggie ground control experiment at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida were harvested Feb. 11 in the same way that crew member Scott Kelly will harvest the zinnias growing in the Veggie system aboard the International Space Station on Feb. 14—Valentine’s Day. Flowering plants will help scientists learn more about growing crops for deep-space missions and NASA’s journey to Mars.
The ground plants didn’t experience some of the same stressors as those grown simultaneously on the ISS — like unexpected fungus growth. However, some of the zinnia plants aboard the floating laboratory pulled through due to collaboration between the astronauts and the ground team at Kennedy. Ultimately, the experiment that went off-script when astronaut Scott Kelly became an autonomous gardener, provided researchers with even more information about how to effectively grow plants in space than they expected.
“I think we’ve learned a lot about doing this kind of experiment. We’re being farmers in space,” Kelly said. “I was extra motivated to bring the plants back to life. I’m going to harvest them on Valentine’s Day.”
“We need to learn a tremendous amount to help develop more robust sustainable food production systems as NASA moves toward long-duration exploration and the journey to Mars,” said Gioia Massa, NASA Kennedy payload scientist for Veggie.
Researchers hope to gather good data regarding long-duration seed stow and germination. Also, whether pollen could affect crew health and how having growing colorful flowering plants to grow could improve crew morale
Veggie is the biggest plant/flower experiment to fly on the station. Experiments involving space plants have been a favorite of astronauts, especially those staying in space for long durations like Scott Kelly. According to behavioral health scientists, part of the pleasure for astronauts is just being involved in meaningful work. But crews in space aren’t the only ones positively affected by growing plants.
“We are sad to see them go,” said Chuck Spern, a project engineer with Vencore on the Engineering Services Contract at Kennedy, “We’ve been caring for them for quite a while. But it’s for the interest of science so we can go to Mars.”
At Kennedy, Spern, removed the Veggie base tray from a controlled environment chamber in the Space Station Processing Facility, and moved it to the Flight Equipment Development Laboratory for harvesting.
The plant pillows containing the zinnia seeds were activated in the Veggie system on the space station and in the ground control experiment on Nov. 13. The plants grew for nearly three months, much longer than the previous red romaine lettuce crop which grew for 33 days. The flowers were watered and monitored by Kelly and other crew members on the space station, and by Spern and other researchers in the control experiment on the ground.
During the harvest, Spern and John Carver, an integration engineer with Jacobs on the Test and Operations Support Contract, carefully cut the colorful blooms and prepared them for storage. The zinnia flower heads were preserved in three ways. Some of the older plants were harvested for their seeds and air-dried at room temperature to allow the seeds to be tested for germination and regrowth potential. Some of the flowers were frozen at minus 80 degrees Celsius and stored for microbial assessment. Some of them were pressed.
“The flowers going to seed are a good demonstration for sustainable food crops,” said Nicole Dufour, a NASA mechanical engineer and Veggie subject-matter expert. “It’s a good example of starting with seeds and ending with seeds, which is what you need to sustain crop growth.”
The remaining plant material, plant pillows, microbial sampling swabs and water samples will be stored at minus 80 degrees Celsius for analysis. All of the samples will be compared with plants and plant pillows from the International Space Station, which will be preserved in the same way and returned to Earth on a future Commercial Resupply Services mission.
“We are learning a tremendous amount from Veggie about plants and plant-human-microbial interactions as part of NASA’s Space Biology Program,” Massa said. “And the knowledge gained on food productions helps fill gaps and mitigate food system risks.”
Massa said the zinnia crop will give researchers insights that are valuable for a number of longer duration and fruiting crops, such as tomatoes, peppers, strawberries and other staple crops such as beans and peanuts.
A zinnia flower is being prepared to be pressed after it was harvested in the Space Station Processing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The flower was one of many zinnia blooms that were harvested from the Veggie ground control system. Photo credit: NASA/Bill White
The next Veggie experiment, Veg-03, will be delivered to the space station on a future Commercial Resupply Services mission. The plant pillows will contain two types of seeds: ’Outredgeous’ red romaine lettuce for the crew to grow and consume, and two other sets containing a small Chinese Cabbage variety called ‘Tokyo Bekana.’
The Veggie system was developed by Orbital Technologies Corp. in Madison, Wisconsin, and tested at Kennedy before flight. Veggie, along with two sets of pillows containing romaine seeds and one set of zinnias, was delivered to the station by SpaceX on the third cargo resupply mission in April 2014.
Last Updated: Feb. 12, 2016
Editor: Linda Herridge
When Scott Kelly tweeted a picture of moldy leaves on the current crop of zinnia flowers aboard the International Space Station, it could have looked like the science was doomed. In fact, science was blooming stronger than ever. What may seem like a failure in systems is actually an exceptional opportunity for scientists back on Earth to better understand how plants grow in microgravity, and for astronauts to practice doing what they’ll be tasked with on a deep space mission: autonomous gardening.
“While the plants haven’t grown perfectly,” said Dr. Gioia Massa, NASA science team lead for Veggie, “I think we have gained a lot from this, and we are learning both more about plants and fluids and also how better to operate between ground and station. Regardless of final flowering outcome we will have gained a lot.”
From drought to flood: when problems are a learning opportunity
The Veggie plant growth facility was installed on the orbiting laboratory in early May of 2014, and the first crop – ‘Outredgrous’ red romaine lettuce – was activated for growth. The first growth cycle faced some issues.
“We lost two plants due to drought stress in the first grow out and thus were very vigilant with respect to the second crop,” said Trent Smith, Veggie project manager.
The second crop of the same lettuce was activated in early July by NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, and thanks to lessons learned from the first run, adjustments to watering and collecting imagery of the plants were made. The leafy greens grew according to schedule, with only one plant pillow not producing. This time the crew was able to eat the lettuce when it was ready to be harvested a month later.
NASA astronauts Scott Kelly and Kjell Lindgren take a bite of plants harvested for the VEG-01 investigation.
Credits: NASA
The next crop on the docket was a batch of zinnia flowers, but they weren’t selected for their beauty. They were chosen because they can help scientists understand how plants flower and grow in microgravity.
“The zinnia plant is very different from lettuce, said Trent Smith, Veggie project manager. “It is more sensitive to environmental parameters and light characteristics. It has a longer growth duration between 60 and 80 days. Thus, it is a more difficult plant to grow, and allowing it to flower, along with the longer growth duration, makes it a good precursor to a tomato plant.
Just more than two weeks into their growth period, though, NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren noted that water was seeping out of some of the wicks – the white flaps that contain the seeds and stick out of the tops of the plant pillows. The water partially engulfed three of the plants. Within 10 days, scientists noted guttation on the leaves of some of the plants. Guttation is when internal pressure builds and forces excess water out of the tips of the leaves. It occurs when a plant is experiencing high humidity. Additionally, the zinnia leaves started to bend down and curl drastically. This condition, called epinasty, can indicate flooding in the roots. The anomalies all pointed to inhibited air flow in the plant growth facility that, when coupled with the excess water, could lead to big problems for the crop.
“After observing the guttation and more significant amounts of free water we decided to see about toggling the Veggie fan from low to high,” said Smith. “We had evidence indicating reduced air flow through the internal Veggie facility volume, and needed to toggle the fan to high to dry things out.”
The fix had to be postponed, though, due to an unplanned spacewalk in mid-December. By that time, tissue in the leaves of some of the plants began to die. On Dec. 22, Smith received a phone call at 3:45 in the morning. Trouble was brewing in the space garden.
“When you have high humidity and wet surfaces,” he said, “leaves start dying, and become prime real estate for mold to grow.”
The mold issue had Smith out of bed and the Veggie team on the phone by 4 a.m. Within four hours, new procedures were written and communicated to NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, who took over care of the zinnias after Lindgren returned to Earth on Dec. 18. Kelly donned a dust mask as a safety measure, and cut away the affected, moldy plant tissue, which was then stowed in the minus eighty degree laboratory freezer (MELFI) so it could be returned to Earth and studied. The plant surfaces and plant pillow surfaces were sanitized with cleaning wipes, and the fans continued at a high speed in hopes of keeping the Veggie chamber dried out and mold growth abated.
By Christmas Eve, though, Kelly called down to the ground support team to report new problems with the plants. It seemed the high fan speed was drying out the crop too much, and Kelly said he thought they needed more water. He was told, though, that the next scheduled watering was not until Dec. 27.
“I think that would be too late,” Kelly told the ground team. “You know, I think if we’re going to Mars, and we were growing stuff, we would be responsible for deciding when the stuff needed water. Kind of like in my backyard, I look at it and say ‘Oh, maybe I should water the grass today.’ I think this is how this should be handled.”
News of the mold didn’t dampen Smith’s Christmas spirit, though.
“We’d been planning on figuring out how to garden autonomously and his request was just perfect,” Smith said. “Christmas Eve 2015 was our gift!”
Taking on the role of autonomous gardener
And so, Kelly became an autonomous gardener aboard the space station.
“This is perfect – he has the helm,” Smith said. “We turned over care to Scott. He’s seen the lettuce, he’s got all the tools he needs, so we just provided him quick guidelines to understand the zinnias.”
What the Veggie team created was dubbed “The Zinnia Care Guide for the On-Orbit Gardener,” and gave basic guidelines for care while putting judgment capabilities into the hands of the astronaut who had the plants right in front of him. Rather than pages and pages of detailed procedures that most science operations follow, the care guide was a one-page, streamlined resource to support Kelly as an autonomous gardener. Kelly tweeted a picture of the flowers in distress, noting that he’d have to channel a character from the movie, “The Martian.”
Contrary to seeming like a dead end for the crop, the issues faced by the zinnias offered a multitude of learning opportunities for scientists back on Earth. In fact, Smith said, the experience drives home what science experiments are all about: finding out what doesn’t work, and figuring out how to solve it. For crews on the way to Mars, Smith said, scientists need to know what would happen if crops experienced drought, flooding, mold growth or other challenges. Would the practices of cutting away dead tissue and sanitizing plants work? How does changing the watering schedule affect the growth? How can crew members be given more opportunities to take charge in the gardening process?
“All these things are so rich in information, my head kind of spins to think about what to focus on,” Smith said. “This is perfect. This is really getting us down the road for other crops.”
Smith said the Veggie team had hoped to move toward autonomous gardening, and Kelly’s willingness to jump in and care for the plants independent of the ground support team was key.
Triumph, not trouble
Shortly after Kelly’s heroic holiday gardening efforts, two of the plants that displayed stress died off and were clipped and stowed in the freezer to be returned to Earth for studying. Not all hope was lost, though. The remaining two plants have continued to thrive, and have even had new offshoots of buds forming.
“We see them growing out of their stressed states as seen by the new growth not showing leaf curling,” Smith said. “We see that we can use our fan to adjust the conditions. We don't see guttation or free water. So, lots of things and better understanding of our tools for the on-orbit autonomous gardener.”
On Jan. 8, Kelly tweeted a picture of the plants’ progress.
On Jan. 12, pictures from Kelly showed the first peeks of petals beginning to sprout on a few buds. The bud-to-petal-to-full-flower process can take about 7 to 10 days, Smith said, so flowers could be present by next week.
If the flowers do blossom, chances are it will be an exciting opportunity for the entire crew, and not just Kelly. Previous astronauts who have conducted plant experiments on orbit have noted that it is an experience that brings crew members together. When NASA astronaut Shannon Lucid grew wheat stalks on the Russian Mir space station in 1996, she called the entire crew over to inspect new seed heads on the tips of the stalks. When the first batch of lettuce was harvested in June of 2014 on the ISS, several crew members joined in the event. When the second batch of lettuce was harvested in August, and astronauts were allowed to eat the fruits of their labor, they gathered and shared the produce with international partners on the station.
“Plants can indeed enhance long duration missions in isolated, confined and extreme environments – environments that are artificial and deprived of nature,” said Alexandra Whitmire, deputy element scientist for the Behavioral Health and Performance (BHP) element in the NASA Human Research Program (HRP). “While not all crew members may enjoy taking care of plants, for many, having this option is beneficial.”
Though most evidence of the psychological benefits of growing plants in space is anecdotal, Whitmire said efforts like Veggie will yield important information in preparation for a Mars mission.
“In future missions, the importance of plants will likely increase given the crews' limited connection to Earth,” Whitmire said. “Studies from other isolated and confined environments, such as Antarctic stations, demonstrate the importance of plants in confinement, and how much more salient fresh food becomes psychologically, when there is little stimuli around.”
The implications of plant life for future spaceflight, Whitmire said, is very significant.
More crops for Veggie are heading to the orbiting laboratory aboard SpaceX-8. The Veg-03 run will include two sets of Chinese cabbage, and one set of red romaine lettuce. In 2018, there are plans to launch dwarf tomato seeds to the space station. Smith said the lessons learned from growing zinnia flowers will be critical in the process of growing tomatoes, a fellow flowering plant. Studies are also in progress to see how adjusting the lighting in the Veggie plant growth facility can affect plan mineral composition. There will be preflight testing to determine what “light recipe” to use aboard the station.
For now, scientists continue to closely monitor the zinnia crop and are following Kelly’s lead for care based on his observations. The unexpected turns experienced during this Veggie run have actually offered bountiful opportunities for new learning and better understanding of one of the critical components to future journeys to Mars.
Smith understands, though, that a space garden is like any other garden – sometimes, things just don’t grow. The Veggie team is hopeful that the newly-emerging petals will fully bloom soon.
“I’m an eternal optimist,” Smith said.
Rachel HobsonInternational Space Station Program Science Office
Johnson Space Center
Last Updated: Jan. 21, 2016
Editor: Kristine Rainey
el dispensador dice:
está floreciendo el espacio,
hay vida más allá del jardín,
de las ideas extraviadas,
se expande el humanismo traduciendo,
colores que pertenecen al ámbito de las almas...
¿sabes el significado de las flores en el vacío?...
la vida viaja por el espacio,
como forma y como agua,
conjugando elementos para hacer química de ramas,
algunas prenden en los suelos,
otras lo hacen en las calmas,
encontrando materia propicia,
para hacer de los ciclos... raíces y escalas...
alguien pronuncia la existencia...
mientras el hombre cree que la flor de su jardín,
es obra de su voluntad desenfrenada...
ya hay jardines en el espacio...
pero en el paraíso las flores no se plantan,
crecen cuando las merecen los hechos,
producidos por las almas. FEBRERO 17, 2016.-
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