To casual observers it is just a disgusting moldy crop of zinnias, but to Astronaut Scott Kelly, it means hope for future trips to Mars.
When Kelly, currently serving a year-long mission on the International Space Station, sent out a tweet of some moldy zinnia leaves, it looked like it was time to trash that particular experiment. But in reality, the mold on the leaves gave Kelly the opportunity to grow food on his own terms (like a space-botanist-cowboy.)
Along with the moldy plants, Kelly tweeted, “Our plants aren’t looking too good. Would be a problem on Mars. I’m going to have to channel my inner Mark Watney.”
If you haven’t read The Martian or seen the movie, Mark Watney is an astronaut/botanist that becomes trapped on Mars after his teams leaves, and has to use some serious brain power to utilize every part of his shelter to create food and water.
In this case, the astronauts are trying to learn how plants grow in microgravity, and the challenges that astronauts on deep space missions might encounter while trying to grow their own food without the help of experts on Earth.
While the mold was an unexpected surprise, the lessons about how fluid and plants interact on the ISS will be beneficial for future experiments.
The first food-growing mission in the “Veggie Plant Growth Facility” onboard the ISS started in 2014. The first plant, a crop of “Outredgrous” red romaine lettuce, lost a few plants to stress. In July 2015, the second crow of lettuce was planted with adjustments made based on the earlier failures. The team tried a different watering schedule, and all but one of the plants flourished. After the August harvest, the astronauts were actually able to sample the space lettuce.
The zinnias were the third crop to be planted in the facility. Zinnias, of the sunflower tribe within the daisy family, are more sensitive to environmental factors like light, and have a longer growth cycle than lettuce. While the lettuce takes about a month to grow, zinnias mature between 60 and 90 days. NASA researchers selected these slightly more finicky plants as a precursor to something even more complicated: the tomato plant.
About two weeks into the growth cycle, the zinnias started showing some problems, including water seepage, guttation on the leaves, and epinasty. All these indicate inhibited air flow in the facility and excess humidity. While the plan was to turn on the fan to dry everything out, an unplanned space walk in December derailed the plans. The condition of the plants worsened and eventually some of them began to die.
When it became clear there was a major problem brewing, the Veggie team on Earth came up with a new plan. Kelly cut away the moldy tissue–which will be studied back on Earth–sanitized the remaining plant surfaces, and turned up the fan. Around December 24th, Kelly noted the leaves were becoming overly dry, but the next scheduled watering wasn’t until December 27.
Then it got a little interesting. (Or as interesting as mold on zinnias in space can get.)
The ground team and Kelly decided that since in a deep space mission, Kelly would be responsible for caring for plants without any help from Earth and since he had already overseen a successful lettuce crop, he would be solely responsible for the care of the plants.
This is the Mark Watney reference. In the book, Watney loses contact with NASA and figures it out on his own. When he reconnects with NASA, he more or less ignores their advice in favor of his own experience. (Editor’s Note: Seriously, read this book.)
The Veggie team created a one-page “The Zinnia Care Guide for the On-Orbit Gardener” and decided to allow Kelly to use his experience to guide the process.
It turned out to be a good decision. While two of the flowers died, the remaining two plants are still alive and kicking.
Not only did this experiment offer a chance to learn what works for growing things in space, it also offered up a real-life experiment to see if astronauts are able to make their own calls.
The flowers should be blooming soon, so stay turned for more tweets.
Filed Under: Aerospace + defense
