AeroGarden mission: crew changeover

At New Year, the AeroGarden blasted off on a new mission – to grow fruiting veg. It started with a crew of three – two peppers and a tomato. The seeds germinated quickly, and the start of the mission went according to plan.

My mission is to grow new things, in new ways.

At the beginning of the year, I set up a new mission in the AeroGarden, growing two peppers (Popti and Redskin) and a tomato (Veranda Red). Ten days later, I had two tomato seedlings, which I had to thin to one. The peppers were a bit slower, but by 19th January they had germinated (and been thinned) too.

The role downunder played in helping track the Apollo 8 mission to the Moon.

In the Hi-Seas habitat in Hawaii, analog astronauts take part in simulated space missions. Ben Greaves joins Emma the Space Gardener to talk about the isolation, the dehydrated diet, and his experiment growing microgreens in space-age hydrogel.

Thirty years ago, Helen Sharman blasted off on her Project Juno mission, becoming the first British astronaut and the first woman to visit the Mir space station. Join Emma the Space Gardener to discover how Helen was chosen for the mission, the plants she grew on Mir, and what happened to the pansy seeds she took into space.

Not long ago, I was summing up our first two months with the AeroGarden, our ‘space garden’. I noted that, although it’s a really good way to start small batches of seedlings for the larger Hydroponicum, in its seed-starting configuration the noise it makes drove us potty.

It’s two months (nine weeks, actually) since our space garden landed, and Ryan and I became pseudonauts. For the first seven weeks, it grew the selection of herbs it came with – Genovese basil, dill and curly parsley. The basil was the quickest to grow, and the most vigorous. The dill was second and grew tallest. The parsley… well, at the end of seven weeks it was just about getting going.

Header image: A SpaceX Dragon capsule, NASA Johnson/Flickr, CC BY-NC

On 21st November, the AeroGarden started making more of a noise than usual, emitting a high-pitched whine. When I showed Ryan, he immediately spotted that the pump was barely making any bubbles, and diagnosed a blockage in the aerator.

If you look at the lists of crops that researchers suggest for space gardens and Martian farms, tomatoes are always on there. However, the first fruit NASA is aiming to grow on the ISS is a chilli pepper. I thought it would be fun to see how dwarf tomatoes and sweet peppers grow in my little space garden.

Can sending vines into space help wine production on Earth? Nicholas Gaume and Dr Michael Lebert from Space Cargo Unlimited join Emma the Space Gardener to discuss Mission WISE, and why they’ve sent both wine and vines to the International Space Station.