Fantasy Space Plants

It’s Sunday morning, and Ryan is still asleep, and I got a bit bored and started playing around with one of those “blog title generators”. (For those of you for whom this is a new concept, they generate click-bait style headlines for a topic you give them.)

Header image: Tokyo Bekana Chinese cabbage leaves prior to harvest aboard the International Space Station. Photo credit: NASA

Over our heads, on the International Space Station, chilli peppers are blooming and being hand-pollinated by astronauts.

This new short video from the University of Florida Space Plants Lab explains how and why they’re studying how plants react to being in microgravity.

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.

Join Emma the Space Gardener in the Gardeners of the Galaxy time machine to learn about the time that NASA encouraged schoolchildren all over the world to grow killer mutant space tomatoes. That can’t be right, can it?

Join Emma the Space Gardener on the Tiangong space station to learn about China’s botanical experiments in space, and why Chinese consumers are eagerly awaiting rice from heaven. Plus – what was the first plant grown in space?

Header image: Rendering of Tiangong Space Station in late July 2022, along with June 2022 with Tianhe core module in the middle, Wentian lab module on the left, Tianzhou cargo spacecrafts on right, and Shenzhou-14 crewed spacecraft at nadir. Image credit Shujianyang via Wikipedia.

Join Emma the Space Gardener as she explores gardening on Earth… and beyond! Emma’s guest on the show this week is Dr Javier Medina, a Space Plant Biologist with the Spanish National Research Council. He talks about why it’s essential we grow plants in space, what we’ve learned from his experiments, and when there might be a greenhouse on the Moon!

NASA will soon be growing chillies on the International Space Station. Jacob Torres joins Emma the Space Gardener to talk New Mexico chiles in space, his Space Chile Challenge citizen science project, and more!

NASA’s latest Space to Ground video includes some lovely images of the Veggie PONDS experiment that’s currently running on the International Space Station. Starting from 00:44, you can see images of the Veggie PONDS modules, radishes and chile peppers that were grown in the Advanced Plant Habitat, the PONDS modules installed in both Veggie units, and a nice clear view of the PONDS modules.

When MTV launched on 1st August 1981, the first images broadcast were NASA footage of the 1969 Apollo 11 Moon landing. MTV replayed that repurposed clip every hour for the next five years. And since it launched the MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs), the awards handed out have been in the shape of a Moonman.