NASA Ideas, Tips & Guides

Header image: Space broccoli. Image credit: NASA/Don Pettit

In 1971, NASA astronaut Stuart Roosa, a former US Department of Agriculture Forest Services smoke jumper, carried tree seeds into lunar orbit during the Apollo 14 mission. The The US Department of Agriculture Forest Services grew those seeds into seedlings, and the distributed the resulting ‘Moon Trees’ to national monuments and dignitaries around the world, with a large number distributed as part of the United States Bicentennial events.  

Exciting news from NASA – the space agency has selected the first science experiments designed for astronauts to deploy on the surface of the Moon during Artemis III (currently planned for 2026) – and one of them will grow plants!

Simonetta Di Pippo, Bocconi University

In this episode, Emma the Space Gardener talks with Marshall Porterfield, Professor of Biological Engineering & Space Biophysics at Purdue University, who offers up some highlights from his long career in space science. During a stint as Division Director for Space Life and Physical Sciences at NASA headquarters in Washington DC. Marshall oversaw the Human Research, Physical Sciences, and Space Biology Programs including research and engineering assets at six NASA centres. He established the first open science, and advanced integrated omics research programs including NASA GeneLab and the NASA Twins Study.

As NASA plans missions to the Moon and Mars, a key factor is figuring out how to feed crew members during their weeks, months, and even years in space.

In the summer of 1863, a world-famous English botanist was pondering why the shoots of climbing plants twirl around as they grow. In this episode, join Emma the Space Gardener as she explores the fascinating world of plant movement, and what that has to do with the first plants that ever flew on NASA’s space shuttle.

The AeroGarden originally hit UK shelves just in time for Christmas 2008, and continued to make waves through 2009. AeroGardens (there are more models available now) are automated indoor hydroponics units, designed to sit on a shelf and provide small edible plants – herbs, leafy greens, tomatoes if you’re happy pruning – with light and liquid nutrients.

How does a kitchen gardener choose what to grow? It’s about balancing quite a complex set of variables, which include the space and time available, the local climate and soil, the gardener’s skill level and what they like to eat. That last one is, itself, quite a complicated topic as culture plays a significant role. There are many thousands of edible plants on the planet; most people only eat a small number and grow fewer still.

Header image: Mizuna lettuce growing aboard the International Space Station before being harvested and frozen for return to Earth. Image credit: NASA 

Word by Matt de Neef, The Conversation

This is a really fun video (12:24 long) from Adam Savage’s Tested series, in which a chef tries to help astronauts on the ISS eat nicer meals by combining foods they already have in stock. Chris Hadfield is their astronaut guinea pig, and demonstrates very effectively why it’s so hard to prepare meals in space!

Right now, 200 miles above your head, chilli peppers are growing on the International Space Station (ISS).

Today is the first day of National Plants at Work Week, which aims to promote the use and benefits of indoor plants. You may have been eyeing up the windowsills in your office with a view to growing your own chillies or sweet peppers, but did you know that you can grow your own fresh air too?

Header image: Born in space: I’d rather not come down to Earth. geniusdevil

Welcome interplanetary gardeners! This week’s Gardeners off World starts with a little video Boeing has put together of the inside of the crew cabin on the recent Starliner test flight (the one that took tree seeds into space). You can see Rosie the instrumented mannequin, but the highlight is watching astronaut Snoopy float about as the spacecraft reaches orbit, and then plop back down into his seat during the descent!

Header image: Chimpanzee Ham with Trainers. Image credit: NASA

Header image: NASA astronaut Rick Mastracchio uses a video camera to photograph the Ant Forage Habitat. Image credit: NASA

Header image: Mission specialist Sally Ride became the first American woman to fly in space. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Hello! Welcome to Gardeners Off World. This week we’ll start with a musical interlude, as violinist Lindsey Stirling recently performed her song, Artemis, on top of the Launch Control Center at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center:

Fifty years ago today, at 13:32 UTC, Apollo 11 launched on its mission to drop off the first humans to set foot on the Moon. It’s something that hasn’t been achieved again since the Apollo program ended, although interest in going back to the Moon has been rekindled somewhat of late. While we remember it as one of the crowning moments of the 20th century, it’s worth noting that the Apollo program wasn’t without its critics. In an interview in 1961, Norbert Wiener, a professor and legendary mathematician at MIT, dismissed the Apollo program as a “moondoggle”!

Over the past few months I have been looking at how future space missions might be able to grow and raise their own food, so I thought it might be nice today to see how the astronauts on the ISS are feeding themselves this Thanksgiving. They’re lucky – they don’t have to eat worms! NASA has supplied them with a special Thanksgiving meal that includes ‘traditional’ dishes: irradiated smoked turkey, thermostabilized candied yams and freeze-dried green beans and mushrooms. Dessert features thermostabilized cherry-blueberry cobbler.” Yum.

I imagine the Apollo 11 astronauts had plenty to do while they were hurtling towards the Moon, but from a bystander’s perspective it was probably pretty dull stuff. Still, it’s Day 3 of the mission, so let’s have a look at what they’ve got stashed away in their space age picnic basket.

In this NASA image from January 2020, you can see Lashelle Spencer taking measurements on ‘Red Robin’ dwarf tomato plants. Lashelle is a plant scientist at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and this photo was taken inside the Plant Processing Area in the spaceport’s Space Station Processing Facility.

Just over a year ago, when we were celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first Moon landing, I talked about the lack of diversity in space and mentioned Mary Jackson. In 2016, the movie Hidden Figures shared the stories of Mary Jackson and two other Black female mathematicians – Katherine Johnson and, Dorothy Vaughan. They worked at NASA when a ‘computer’ still meant a person carrying out mathematical calculations. The film is based on a book by Margot Lee Shetterly, which I am reading at the moment. The book offers a more detailed and accurate account of the prejudice these women (and others) had to overcome.

On 20th July 1969, Armstrong and Aldrin had to attempt something no one had done before – landing on the lunar surface. They were in orbit some 50,000 feet above the Moon, traveling at several thousand miles per hour, and had to pilot the lunar module Eagle down to the Moon. The entire process, which was little more than a controlled fall, would take just 12 minutes.

After safely landing on the Sea of Tranquility on the evening of 20th July 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin had bacon for breakfast before heading out onto the Moon in the early hours of 21st July. (Note that, unlike the Command Module, the Lunar Module (Eagle) only had cold water supplies.) It was Neil Armstrong, of course, who nipped out of first, saying his immortal line as he stepped onto the surface.

Hello, and welcome to Gardeners off World! On 15 February, the NG-13 cargo ship blasted off from NASA Wallops on its way to the International Space Station (ISS). It arrived on 18 February, where NASA astronaut Drew Morgan caught it with the Canadarm2 robotic arm.

Gardeners of the Galaxy has completed its first solar orbit! Join Emma the Space Gardener for a birthday celebration and learn how GotG got started, hear the story of a space plants experiment you’ll never forget, and find out which plant Emma would choose to take into space.

What did you get for Christmas? Hopefully something good, something seedy and something spacey! 

Join Emma the Space Gardener as she explores gardening on Earth… and beyond! Emma’s guest on this week’s show is Dr Gioia Massa, a Project Scientist at the NASA Kennedy Space Center, working on the Veggie growing system on the International Space Station. Gioia talks about the challenges of growing plants in space, those blooming space zinnias, and when we might see astronauts eating their first space tomato!

Hello, and welcome to Gardeners Off World! I am writing this from lockdown, and you’re probably reading it from lockdown, too. The good news for UK gardeners is that it’s still OK for most people to do some gardening – and that includes people who grow their food on an allotment.

Fifty years ago, Apollo 11 was hurtling along on its mission to deposit two white guys on the Moon. By the time the Apollo program was wound down, 12 people had walked on the Moon, and 24 had been in orbit around the Moon. (Only 6 got to drive a lunar rover.) They were all white guys. Since then, no one has been further than a Low Earth Orbit.

On 24th July 1969, at 16:50 UTC, Apollo 11 splashed down in the north Pacific, about 900 miles south west of Hawaii.

Aldrin and Armstrong blasted off from the Moon in the Eagle lander at 17:54 UTC on 21st June, after spending 21 hours and 36 minutes on the lunar surface. They were carrying 22 kilograms of samples, including 50 rocks, fine-grained lunar “soil” and two core tubes that included material from up to 13 centimetres below the Moon’s surface.

Header image: One of the Vanguard satellites being checked out at Cape Canaveral, Florida in 1958. NASA