Unwelcome insects in space

Word by Matt de Neef, The Conversation

Join Emma the Space Gardener as she explores gardening on Earth… and beyond! In this episode, Emma recaps the latest space plant news and then talks about some of the seeds with space stories.

While we’re waiting for Tim Peake to blast off to the International Space Station (ISS) to begin his Principia mission, I thought it might be fun to have a look at the first Briton in space – Helen Sharman, who was also the first woman to visit the Mir space station, in 1991.

On Friday evening we headed to London (an unusual event in itself) to the Natural History Museum for one of their special After Hours events. The museum stays open late into the evening for guests who have booked tickets to visit the special exhibitions while it’s quieter (although the main bulk of the museum closes as normal). We weren’t booked in for an exhibition – we ended up in the restaurant for a special tasting session of edible insects.

One of the nerdy things I enjoy doing in my spare time is researching the first seeds to have made it into space. This is what I have found so far:

From the moment humans started to reach for the skies, we have used other species from Earth to test what’s safe and what happens to life away from its natural habitat on the planet’s surface. 

Join Emma the Space Gardener as she explores gardening on Earth… and beyond! In this episode, Emma recaps important spacecraft Arrivals and Departures and learns about growing nutrients and medicines in space. There’s a new plant experiment running on the International Space Station, and exciting news from ESA.

As gardeners, we’re all familiar with finding caterpillars in the cabbages, but we’re also adept at removing them before we cook up our feasts (or, in my case, feeding the whole lot to the chickens). But what if we didn’t? There are plenty of cultures around the world in which insects provide a valuable source of protein, and even in the Western world our food processing systems don’t guarantee us insect-free food, so we’re all eating them unwittingly anyway. (Although, apparently, the idea that we eat spiders in our sleep is an urban legend.)

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

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.

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.

Back in 2014, I bought some seeds that had been into space. They are cinnamon basil (Ocimum basilicum Cinnamon), still sealed into their space packet.