Thanksgiving in Space

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

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.

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.

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.

In 2020, Morgan Irons made space exploration history when she sent the first Earth soils to the International Space Station. Morgan joins Emma the Space Gardener to talk about the importance of soil structure on Earth, why she sent soil into space, and how we might develop living soils on Mars.

In this latest episode, Emma the Space Gardener talks with Dr Christina Johnson, who works with microgreens at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. She explains the benefits and challenges of growing microgreens in orbit, and what it’s going to take to get them onto astronaut menus.

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.