NASA astronauts harvest radish crop aboard the ISS for the first time ever – Technology News, Firstpost

FP trend3 December 2020 16:10:49

NASA astronaut Kate Rubins collected radish plants grown in the Advanced Plant Habitat (APH) aboard the International Space Station on November 30.

According to NASA, he collected and wrapped each of 20 radish plants in foil and placed them in cold storage for the return trip to Earth in 2021 during SpaceX’s 22nd Commercial Resupply Services mission.

According to NASA, the Plant Habitat-02 (PH-02) experiment is the first time NASA has grown radishes in the orbiting laboratory. They selected the plant because it is well understood by scientists and reaches maturity in just under a month. Additionally, they are nutritious, edible, and genetically similar to Arabidopsis that researchers frequently study in microgravity conditions.

NASA astronaut and Expedition 64 flight engineer Kate Rubins checks radish plants growing for the Plant Habitat-02 experiment which seeks to optimize plant growth in the unique environment of space and evaluate nutrition and the taste of plants.
Credits: NASA

Speaking about the experiment, Nicole Dufour, NASA’s APH program manager at the Kennedy Space Center, said that radishes are a different type of crop than the leafy greens that astronauts previously grown on the space station, adding that to grow a wide range of crops helps them understand which plants thrive in microgravity conditions and offer the best variety and nutritional balance for astronauts on long-term missions.

The study’s lead researcher, Karl Hasenstein, added that radishes offer great research possibilities by virtue of their sensitive bulb formation and that 20 plants can be grown in the APH, analyzed the effects of CO2, and the acquisition and distribution of minerals.

According to NASA, the experiment will allow them to identify the optimal balance between care and nutrition needed to produce quality plants.

The study’s lead researcher, Karl Hasenstein, hopes to learn how spatial conditions such as weightlessness affect plant growth. However, the historic harvest does not mean a conclusion of the experiment, Dufour added.

According to her, after the first harvest, a second vector will be used to repeat the experiment by planting another set of radish seeds to increase sample size and improve scientific accuracy.