Gardeners of the Galaxy Mission Report: 30th April 2024
Your weekly round-up of astrobotany news and adventure. This week we’ve got a Chinese space aquarium, a new hub for develop a self-sufficient food system for long-duration space missions, and more!
Hello, Gardeners of the Galaxy! Welcome to this week’s Mission Report.
China launched three taikonauts to the Tiangong space station on 25th April for the Shenzhou-18 mission. Ye Guangfu, Li Cong and Li Guangsu are slated to perform over 90 experiments during their time in space, including a couple of interesting astrobotany investigations.
One involves studying an aquatic ecosystem of hornwort and zebra fish to see how the space environment affects their growth and the system’s balance. At just 1.25 litres, the aquarium accommodates four fish. If it’s successful, it may pave the way for future taikonauts to raise fish for food.
"The next step in our research involves conducting experiments on fruit flies and mice," said Cang Huaixing, a chief researcher for the space station's scientific experiments, at the Technology and Engineering Center for Space Utilization under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
You can find more images of the aquarium being prepared here.
The Shenzhou-18 crew will also be tending a more conventional space garden, sowing over 100 Arabidopsis seeds and raising them for about four weeks. At the end of the experiment, the plants will be frozen at -80°C and returned to Earth for analysis. This research aims to observe changes in plant stem cells, with potential implications for developing crops that could thrive in extraterrestrial environments. According to India Today, this is the world's first in-orbit study on plant tip stem cells, delving into the mechanisms of plant evolutionary adaptation to gravity.
It's also likely that Shenzhou-18 carried a payload of seeds for space-breeding projects, but we’ll have to wait and see what details are released.
Source: Shenzhou-18 taikonauts start journey to space station for more sci-tech experiments.
In other news...
NASA has chosen forever homes for the trees grown from seeds that flew beyond the Moon on the Artemis I mission.
Read more: Artemis Moon Trees.
The German Space Agency, DLR is teaming up with the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) and commercial partners to revolutionise closed-loop food technologies and sustainable material utilization in space and beyond. The goal of their ground-breaking project Vanguard bioEconomic Synergies and Technological Advancements (VESTA), is to develop a self-sufficient food system for long-duration space missions. The VESTA facility will serve as a hub for testing and evaluating various food research, technologies, and systems. It will focus on various types of food production, food processing, food storage, side stream management, and equipment innovation.
Read more: Swedish I.S.A.A.C. Joins Forces to Create a Sustainable Bio-Economy in Space and Hydromars participates in a consortium that aims to build a self-sufficient living environment for settlement in space.
Space, Policy, Agriculture, Climate and Extreme Environment (SPACE2) is the audacious vision of a group of 18 UNL faculty and research members to lead the nation in planting the first acre of corn or soybeans on Mars.
Read more: To infinity and beyond: UNL launches initiative to plant first acre in space.
Vertical Future is building on NASA research, exploring using a kind of “pillow” that will safely contain the liquid for use by space plants and automating the process of injecting the fertirrigant (fertiliser mixed with water).
Read more: Autonomous vertical farming startup to grow crops in space in 2026.
Within just two days of hitting e-commerce platform Taobao, the initial batch of space-bred coral lily bulbs named "Yandan No 1" completely sold out, demonstrating the strong public interest in these unique and resilient blossoms.
Read more: Retail success of space flower shows strong public support.
Students from Dos Rios Elementary School are sending Arabidopsis seeds to the ISS as part of the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program (SSEP) Mission 18. Their experiment is about how well the Arabidopsis seed can grow in a test tube with microgravity and then if the fertiliser will help it grow.
Read more: Dos Rios Elementary experiment chosen for space mission.
At 12pm on Saturday (4 May 2024), CBS will air Mission Unstoppable season 5 episode 19, with a bioengineering student who demonstrates how to extract strawberry DNA and insights into NASA’s groundbreaking efforts to grow fresh crops in space.
Read more: Mission Unstoppable Season 5 Episode 19 Proteins, Pets and Plants Airs May 4 2024 on CBS.
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, we’ll both get up to £50 in credit (£25 per fuel).
Boeing will launch its first-ever Starliner astronaut mission for NASA as early as 6 May 2024. The critical test flight will show its commercial space capsule is ready to ferry crews to and from the ISS. The Starliner Crew Flight Test will launch on a weeklong mission to the ISS from Space Launch Complex 41 of the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Liftoff is set for 10:34 p.m. EDT (0234 May 7 GMT).
Read more: Boeing Starliner 1st astronaut flight: Live updates.
With the graduation of ESA’s latest astronaut class (the ‘Hoppers’), the UK has its third astronaut. Rosemary Coogan spoke about the training process, and learning how to move in microgravity.
Read more: Astronaut Rosemary Coogan on overcoming the temptation to ‘swim’ in microgravity.
Planning a space-themed party? You could do worse than make a ‘Flight Cake’, which probably got its name when Yuri Gagarin became the first person in space on 12 April 1961. The Moscow Times includes a recipe in this article exploring the history of space food:
Read more: Bake a Cake That is Out of This World.
In 1979, Bulgaria became the third country in the world, after the Soviet Union and the US, to create space food. Now the Bulgarian Institute of Cryobiology and Food Technologies is working with private companies on a fermented probiotic beverage especially tailored to space flight conditions.
Read more: Probiotic beverages and a space menu: Bulgarian scientists are developing food of the future.
While wine remains at the centre of debates among health professionals, some are considering how to bring it into space to make astronauts' journey more enjoyable. Gianfranco Vissani has embarked on an experiment to create wine in pill form. The challenge is to transform the liquid into compact pills that preserve its organoleptic treasure and potential for enjoyment through technology, making distribution in space possible.
Read more: Gianfranco Vissani invents wine "in pill form" for astronauts alongside scientists: a sneak peek.
Geopolitics explains why the astronaut that lands on the moon with NASA in 2026 will not be French, German or Italian.
Read more: How Japan beat Europe to become America’s BFF on the moon.
There’s a lot that you can say in Japanese about rice: how the grain looks, smells, and tastes, and how it physically feels from first bite to final gulp. You’ll hear words like plump (fukkura), faintly sweet (amai), piping-hot (hoka-hoka) kernels with a shiny (tsuyayaka) paleness (shiroi); individual grains (tsubukan) with a springiness (nebari); the steam filling the room with the scent of home. By the end, you’ll grasp a basic truth about plain rice in Japan: It’s never bland.
Read more: White Rice Is Bland? These Japanese Researchers Beg to Differ
Slow Food’s Plant a Seed Kit is an initiative that seeks to get Ark of Taste seeds—rare, endangered, diverse and distinctive foods—into home gardens. And every purchased kit pays for a free kit for a schoolhouse garden. For 2024, the kit includes four grains to grow at a garden scale: Cocke’s Prolific Corn, Coral Sudanese Sorghum, Purple Karma Barley, and Red Fife Wheat.
Read more: Turn Your Garden Into an ‘Ark of Taste’ for Nearly Lost Plants.
In 2017 molecular biologist Federica Bertocchini, who at the time was researching the embryonic development of vertebrates at the Spanish National Research Council, stumbled on the potentially game-changing discovery that waxworms can digest plastic. The enzymes they use could present a solution to our plastic pollution problems.
Read more: Watch these hungry waxworms eat through plastic and digest it too.
Erin Zimmerman’s moving memoir of botany and motherhood explores the historical pressures on female scientists.
Read more: Are women in research being led up the garden path?
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Ex solo ad astra,
Emma (Space Gardener)