Gardeners of the Galaxy Mission Report: 22nd April 2024
Your weekly round-up of astrobotany news and adventure. This week we've got an astrobotanist heading for space, out-of-this-world strawberries, and Lithuanian space plants!
Hello, Gardeners of the Galaxy! Welcome to this week's Mission Report.
University of Florida Distinguished Professor Rob Ferl will be the first NASA-funded academic researcher to conduct an experiment as part of a commercial space crew on an upcoming mission of Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket.
Ferl, director of UF's new space institute, has spent his career studying how biology responds to spaceflight, progressing from experiments in his Gainesville lab to parabolic flight tests to projects on the space shuttle and the International Space Station.
Now, funded through a grant from NASA's Flight Opportunities program, Ferl has an opportunity to personally conduct experiments on how the transition to and from microgravity impacts gene expression in cells and, more broadly, to develop protocols for future "researcher-tended" suborbital flights.
Ferl and his colleague Anna-Lisa Paul (GotG Mission Specialist for episode 45), also a professor of horticultural sciences, have spent their careers seeking to understand plant gene expression in microgravity, but most of their experiments have been done by astronauts in space. As Paul puts it, on launches to the space station, astronauts now generally fly separately from science payloads, meaning that science is done "in space" and not "on the way to space."
Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket offers scientists like Ferl the opportunity to conduct science throughout the transition from gravity to microgravity and back.
"As commercial space programs have advanced and access to space has become more available, I always hoped I might be able to conduct our experiments myself in microgravity," said Ferl. "I feel very grateful for this opportunity. After years, decades even, of working with astronauts to conduct our experiments, it's an honor to be at the forefront of researchers conducting their own experiments in space."
Ferl and Paul helped develop experimental devices called Kennedy Space Center Fixation Tubes, or KFTs, that quickly and safely mix test materials (in this case, a model plant called Arabidopsis thaliana) and preservative solutions to "fix" a moment of gene expression so researchers can study what was happening at different stages of the flight. KFTs are often used on the space station to safely and effectively handle solutions in a microgravity environment.
On the New Shepard flight, Ferl will activate KFTs at four different points in the mission: prior to launch, upon reaching microgravity, at the end of the weightless period as the vehicle begins its descent, and upon landing. New Shepard reaches an apogee above the Kármán line, the internationally recognized boundary of space (62 miles/100 km). On the ground, Paul and members of the UF Space Plants lab team will receive information from the flight that will trigger four identical "control" KFTs. After the mission, the team will bring all the plant samples back to their lab in Gainesville for analysis.
"The successful use of KFTs enables a wide range of biological experiments in suborbital space, as any biology that can fit inside the KFTs can be sampled at any phases of flight chosen, in real time, by the scientist astronaut," Ferl said.
Blue Origin has not yet announced the full crew or target launch date for Ferl's flight. New Shepard launches from Blue Origin's Launch Site One near Van Horn, Texas.
Source: University of Florida scientist to fly on Blue Origin suborbital mission.
Related paper: Haveman, Natasha J., et al. "Utilizing the KSC fixation tube to conduct human-tended plant biology experiments on a suborbital spaceflight." Life 12.11 (2022): 1871. https://www.mdpi.com/2075-1729/12/11/1871
In other news...
There are four space breeding industrial park projects in East China's Shandong Province. The "purple agriculture industrial park" produces space-bred black goji berries, blueberries and purple sweet potatoes. Anthocyanins can significantly increase the added value of agricultural products and help farmers increase their income.
Read more: Space breeding significant in protecting China's biological diversity, upgrading industrial chain.
"Space Lotus No. 36", a product of China's space breeding program, has been planted on a total area of more than 20 million mu, accounting for over 80% of the total cultivation area of white lotus seeds in China. China aims to launch a second satellite dedicated to space breeding this year.
Read more: China makes big strides in space breeding.
In the 1970s, Lithuanian scientists started experimenting with plants and their ability to grow in microgravity conditions. Their work culminated in 1982 when Arabidopsis Thaliana was grown in outer space from seed to seed - a world-first achieved by Lithuanians. Dr Danguolė Švegždienė, one of the scientists who made history with this astrobotanical breakthrough, recounts a mesmerising story of creativity, perseverance and ingenuity of a group of scientists working under a totalitarian regime.
Read more: The Curious Case of Lithuanian Astrobotany.
Three years of hard work led to the creation of SPEARS2, polymer sensors produced by a research team led by Ying Diao and Andrew Leakey. They're resistant to moisture and temperature, can expand by more than 400% while remaining attached to a plant as it grows, and can transmit a wireless signal to a remote monitoring location.
Read more: Scientists in space are now closer to cultivating plants using an innovative device.
The Australian Berry Journal has a great article on space strawberries, written by Prof Michelle Watt at the University of Melbourne and Prof Harvey Millar from the University of Western Australia. If you've ever wondered why strawberries will make a great crop, and what needs to be done to make them better....
Read more: Australian Berry Journal - AUTUMN 2024 - Edition 18 (from page 84).
And Prof Millar also spoke to RTRFM about autonomous agriculture, space gardening and international, interdisciplinary collaborations.
Listen now: Plants in Space: Professor Harvey Millar.
GotG Friend Gioia Massa explains that, because of Growing Beyond Earth (GBE), some plants that NASA personnel would never thought about made it to orbit. The ISS has also implemented strategies started in GBE classrooms, like a new leaf vegetable harvesting strategy that involves frequent harvesting as plants grow.
Read more: How Miami-Dade students are feeding astronauts. Inside NASA-funded program at Fairchild.
For the moment, Earth is the only habitable planet in our solar system, and Gardeners of the Galaxy is proudly powered by renewable energy via Ecotricity. If you're in the UK and you make the switch to Ecotricity using my code (RAF-6DRP5) before 31 May 2024, you can get up to £50 in credit on your account (£25 per fuel).
NASA's BioNutrients program has demonstrated that engineered baker's yeasts can produce beta-carotene and zeaxanthin in space, and their ambient shelf life on the International Space Station (ISS) is 3.9 years. The success of BioNutrients-1 and -2 paves the way for further biomanufacturing processes that will ensure the safe consumption of essential nutrients and compounds for long-duration space missions.
Read more: BioNutrients Flight Experiments.
And an analog crew at HI-SEAS in Hawai'i collaborated with the Synthetic Biology BioNutrients team to test continuous passaging and growth methods of BioNutrients-3 kefir cultures.
Read more: BioNutrients-3 Kefir Growth Experiment Completed During Analog Astronaut Mission.
Archaeologists have found the first evidence of human habitation within lava tubes, in the deserts of northern Saudi Arabia.
Read more: Ancient humans lived inside a lava tube in the Arabian desert.
Following several years of experimenting at lab scale, Solar Foods has opened its first factory dedicated to making human food from electricity and air. The company has already gained novel food approval for solein in Singapore and is seeking to introduce its products in the US this autumn, followed by the EU by the end of 2025.
Read more: Eating light: Finnish startup begins making food 'from air and solar power'.
Scientific American has an article on the three payloads (LEMS, LEAF and LDA) NASA has selected for a lunar landing during Artemis III.
Read more: NASA's Artemis Astronauts Will Help Grow Crops on the Moon—And Much More.
In April 1969, the rapid pace of preparations for the first Moon landing continued. The successful Apollo 9 mission in March cleared the way for Apollo 10 to test all three components of the spacecraft in lunar orbit in May, in a dress rehearsal for the landing itself. Apollo 10 astronauts Thomas P. Stafford, John W. Young, and Eugene A. Cernan and their backups L. Gordon Cooper, Donn F. Eisele, and Edgar D. Mitchell continued training in spacecraft simulators while engineers prepared their Saturn V rocket and Apollo spacecraft for the mid-May launch.
Read more: 55 Years Ago: Three Months Until the Moon Landing.
New environmentally-friendly growing media made from waste materials will be developed by researchers at the University of Sheffield's Institute for Sustainable Food, for use when growing crops in controlled environments. The project, WHyGro-in-Me (Waste-based Hybrid Growing Media), will address the challenge of reducing the environmental impacts of crop production in controlled environments, whilst sustainably increasing crop yield.
Read more: New environmentally-friendly growing materials to be developed for food production.
Modern biology textbooks assert that only bacteria can take nitrogen from the atmosphere and convert it into a usable form for life. Plants that fix nitrogen, such as legumes, do so by harbouring symbiotic bacteria in root nodules. But a recent discovery upends that rule.
Researchers describe the first known nitrogen-fixing organelle within a eukaryotic cell. The organelle is the fourth example of primary endosymbiosis – the process by which a prokaryotic cell is engulfed by a eukaryotic cell and evolves beyond symbiosis into an organelle.
Read more: Scientists Discover First Nitrogen-Fixing Organelle.
Purple worlds, dominated by bacteria that receive little or no visible light or oxygen and use invisible infrared radiation to power photosynthesis, would produce a distinctive "light fingerprint" detectable by next-generation ground- and space-based telescopes.
Read more: In search for alien life, purple may be the new green.
During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, women were very much at the heart of botany. Botany was considered a wholesome and enriching activity for "the fairer sex," and middle- and upper-class girls were encouraged from childhood to take part in a variety of ways. That all changed in the 1830s.
Read more: How Lydia Ernestine Becker Was Once Central to—Then Excluded from—the Study of Botany.
Researchers have (accidentally) discovered that hibernating bumblebee queens can survive for up to a week underwater. They don't fully understand why the submerged bees didn’t drown, but the findings make sense in the context of bee hibernation.
Read more: Hibernating Bumblebee Queens Can Survive Underwater for Up to a Week, Study Finds.
Woody vine Triphyophyllum peltatum turns to carnivory when it's short on phosphorus.
Read more: Plantwatch: why does a rainforest vine turn into a part-time carnivore?
British garden centres and plant nurseries are bracing for the introduction of post-BREXIT physical checks for many plant and animal products coming into Britain from the EU on 30 April. Many are stockpiling plants, concerned that the new border posts may not cope with the volume of deliveries.
Read more: Garden centres in UK stockpile plants before new Brexit checks.
A perennial favourite - farmers in the UK's 'rhubarb triangle' harvest their rhubarb the old-fashioned way, by candlelight. A trio of frost exposure, heated sheds and darkness forces the rhubarb to grow sweet and tender stalks.
Read more: The English Farmers Who Harvest Rhubarb by Candlelight.
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Ex solo ad astra,
Emma (Space Gardener)