Sunday Supplement: Essential Oils in Space
Have you ever wondered how the space environment affects essential oils? No, me neither.
Hello, Gardeners of the Galaxy, and welcome to the GotG Sunday Supplement, premium content for my top Rocket Boosters!
This week, while looking for something else in NASA's Space Station Research Explorer, I came across the Young Living investigation. In 2019, researchers from Young Living studied "the effects of exposure to the extraterrestrial environment on plant seeds and essential oils."
It makes sense for Young Living, I guess, since it is a company that sells essential oils. Or, as Wikipedia says, "a multi-level marketing company" that "sells essential oils and other related products". (Apparently, the company's business practices have landed it in hot water on more than one occasion.)
It was in July 2019 that the company announced a "partnership with NASA and the International Space Station (ISS). In the first partnership of its kind, the entities will send essential oils and plant seeds to the International Space Station for study on the effects of solar radiation on the potency of essential oil products. For one month, samples will be housed on the ISS, where they can be exposed to solar radiation and then compared to identical samples left on Earth."
But although their payload definitely flew to the ISS, it's quite difficult to track down many more details. And that's because it didn't happen quite like that.
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