{"id":13944,"date":"2017-12-19T08:59:39","date_gmt":"2017-12-19T08:59:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/?p=13944"},"modified":"2017-12-19T08:59:39","modified_gmt":"2017-12-19T08:59:39","slug":"zero-gravity-plant-growth-experiments-delivered-space-station","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/zero-gravity-plant-growth-experiments-delivered-space-station\/","title":{"rendered":"Zero gravity plant growth experiments delivered to space station"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Dragon resupply ship is pictured just 10 meters away from the space station\u2019s Canadarm2 as it delivers supplies and research experiments on Dec. 17. PHOTO COURTESY OF NASA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The latest resupply mission to the International Space Station delivered hundreds of seeds to the spacefaring research lab Sunday, Dec. 17, to test how plants grow in the stressful environment of zero gravity.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is the fourth plants-in-space experiment for University of Wisconsin\u2013Madison Professor of Botany\u00a0Simon Gilroy<\/a>. His lab will grow identical seedlings on Earth during the month-long experiment to compare their growth with and without gravity. The researchers are studying how plants respond to low-oxygen environments created by changes in how water and air behave in zero gravity.<\/span><\/p>\n

New equipment will allow Gilroy to grow his plants under lights on the space station for the first time, providing more realistic conditions compared to previous experiments in the dark. In another first for Gilroy\u2019s team, astronauts will take images of living plants as they grow using microscopes on the space station.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Simon Gilroy<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The seeds were delivered to the space station by a SpaceX Dragon capsule launched by a reused Falcon rocket. After the NASA-funded experiment ends, astronauts will apply a fixative mixture to stop growth before freezing the plants for transfer back to Earth.<\/span><\/p>\n

Gilroy says the loss of gravity has surprising effects on normally mundane things, like how water flows \u2014 or doesn\u2019t.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWater becomes really sticky on the space station. So if you went swimming, it would just stick to the surface of you, it would stick to your mouth and you would drown,\u201d says Gilroy. \u201cAnd if you water your plants, the water wants to stick to the surface of the plants and to the roots, creating a low-oxygen environment.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Gilroy\u2019s team turns to Arabidopsis \u2014 a small mustard plant common in plant research \u2014 to answer their questions about zero-gravity plant growth. In their current experiment, the researchers are growing mutant Arabidopsis that responds strongly to low-oxygen stress, at least on Earth. They are also growing Arabidopsis plants that they engineered to produce fluorescent proteins in response to oxygen deprivation. The fluorescent plants will be imaged in orbit by astronauts in the middle of the experiment.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThat will give us a map of where within the plant there is local low-oxygen stress,\u201d says Gilroy.<\/span><\/p>\n

In a departure from previous experiments, the Arabidopsis seedlings will be grown in the light. The upgrade comes as Gilroy\u2019s team gains access to the \u201cveggie\u201d system, which was used in 2015 to\u00a0grow lettuce<\/a>\u00a0for astronauts to eat. Veggie was developed by Madison-based ORBITEC.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Plates hold seeds of the mustard plant Arabidopsis, which will be grown on the International Space Station to test their response to zero gravity. PHOTO COURTESY OF NASA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Once the samples are safely back on Earth, Gilroy\u2019s lab will compare the pattern of gene expression of space-grown plants to their counterparts grown on Earth. They will also do their own imaging of another fluorescent marker for stress. In all, the data will allow the researchers to ask if the plants are experiencing something akin to terrestrial oxygen deprivation, or stresses unique to growing in space.<\/span><\/p>\n

The experiment and crew supplies launched on Dec. 15 after several delays, with a launch window of a single second. To prepare for the launch, Gilroy and his team traveled to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to perform several dry runs setting up seeds in special chambers. Then, several days before the scheduled launch date, the researchers flew down with enough seed to handle six delayed launches. Each delay that lasts more than two days requires the experiment to be completely reset, otherwise the seeds may germinate before they arrive in space, spoiling the experiment.<\/span><\/p>\n

As spacefaring plant growth experiments like Gilroy\u2019s continue to pile up, what have biologists learned?<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI think the biggest thing that we\u2019ve got is that plants grow\u00a0okay<\/em>\u00a0in space,\u201d says Gilroy, noting that at the beginning of the space age, even that wasn\u2019t guaranteed. UW\u2013Madison has a long history of such experiments,\u00a0dating back to 1967<\/a>. \u201cPlants grow well enough to, for instance, go through an entire life cycle. The issue is how well the plants grow. We are still at the level of working out whether the issues in space are intrinsic to the biology, or whether we\u2019re just not really good space gardeners yet.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHuman agriculture has been going for tens of thousands of years on land,\u201d says Gilroy. \u201cAnd we are right at the dawn of space agriculture. We just haven\u2019t done enough of it to know which are the correct ways to do things.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The latest resupply mission to the International Space Station delivered hundreds of seeds to the spacefaring research lab Sunday, Dec. 17, to test how plants grow in the stressful environment of zero gravity. This is the fourth plants-in-space experiment for University of Wisconsin\u2013Madison Professor of Botany\u00a0Simon Gilroy. His lab will grow identical seedlings on Earth […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":13947,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,17,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-other","category-research","category-space-news"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/plates-500x333.jpg",500,333,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/plates-500x333-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/plates-500x333-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/plates-500x333.jpg",500,333,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/plates-500x333.jpg",500,333,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/plates-500x333.jpg",500,333,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/plates-500x333.jpg",500,333,false],"ultp_layout_landscape_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/plates-500x333.jpg",500,333,false],"ultp_layout_landscape":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/plates-500x333.jpg",500,333,false],"ultp_layout_portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/plates-500x333.jpg",500,333,false],"ultp_layout_square":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/plates-500x333.jpg",500,333,false],"newspaper-x-single-post":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/plates-500x333.jpg",500,333,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-big":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/plates-500x333.jpg",500,333,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-list-image":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/plates-500x333.jpg",95,63,false],"web-stories-poster-portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/plates-500x333.jpg",500,333,false],"web-stories-publisher-logo":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/plates-500x333.jpg",96,64,false],"web-stories-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/plates-500x333.jpg",150,100,false]},"author_info":{"info":["Amrita Tuladhar"]},"category_info":"Other<\/a> Research<\/a> Space\/ AstroPhysics<\/a>","tag_info":"Space\/ AstroPhysics","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13944\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}