Plants in space

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Zinnia plant on a space station in earth orbit

Plants in space are plants that can live and / or grow in space and cope with conditions such as weightlessness , vacuum , little light and extreme temperatures thanks to special technologies. Mostly they are grown in controlled scientific gardens. This process is also called astrobotany .

In the context of space travel , they could be used to produce food and create an atmosphere and oxygen , thereby creating better living conditions.

The NASA plans to grow crops in space to protect astronauts with food to feed and from health problems and so prepare for longer flights.

Problems for plants in space

Plants in space are exposed to extreme abiotic environmental factors , which requires additional technology to allow them to grow and survive.

Weightlessness and gravity

The first challenge is to let plants grow without gravity , since without this it can come to uprooting and the plant does not have enough adhesion and could thus be separated from the vital soil. The science that deals with this is called gravitational biology . The ability of plants to align themselves with the help of gravity is known as “ gravitropism ”.

Vacuum and lack of water

Plants could not survive in a vacuum because they would lack the carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) for their metabolism and they would dry up due to the lack of hydrogen . Therefore, they would be dependent on life support systems .

light and darkness

In space, the plant cannot receive enough light in many places, which means that photosynthesis is not possible. Too much light can also damage the plant, as the radiation and heat destroy chlorophylls . Plant growth is based on the light source. In experiments with a lot of light, plants grew straight, while they could not find orientation in the dark and therefore grew criss-cross ( phototropism ). The leaves must face the light in order to produce high-energy carbohydrates.

Cosmic rays and chemical factors

The intensity of cosmic rays , which deviates greatly from the living conditions on earth, can also prove difficult for life and health. See also: radiation exposure

ground

In addition to the plant itself, the soil must also be rich in minerals and water . Due to the greatly reduced boiling point of water in a vacuum, it is not possible to keep soil moist without an artificial atmosphere and thus to supply plants with water. See also: soil quality

Climate and temperature

Another major problem is the extremely high or low temperatures in space, which make it almost impossible for the plant to survive as it either dries up or freezes. See also: Cold stress in plants , wintering (plant) and drought stress

Biotic factors

Since no animals and plants can be clearly identified in the previously known space of mankind, there is also a lack of plants and insects such as bees , which contribute to pollination and other symbiotic processes (e.g. for soil quality ) .

Benefits of using plants in space

Plants can convert carbon dioxide from the air into carbohydrates and generate elemental oxygen from water . They can also regulate the humidity in the cabin. Growing plants in space can also provide health and psychological benefits to space flight crews. Plants are an important part of terraforming in order to build up an earth-like oxygen-containing atmosphere and to enable oxygen-dependent life.

Research on plant breeding and keeping in space

Above all, several experiments are used to examine how plant growth, health and lifespan, as well as seed distribution and quality differ from the conditions on earth. In this way, scientists can study whether certain plant growth patterns are innate or environmental.
Many experiments take a more general approach to observing the general growth patterns of plants as opposed to specific growth behavior. For example, in one such experiment by the Canadian Space Agency, it was found that white spruce seedlings grew differently than earthbound seedlings in the gravity-free space environment. The space seedlings showed increased growth of sprouts and needles and a randomized amyloplast distribution compared to the earthbound control group was found.

History of plant use and keeping in space

Beginnings on earth and experiments on seed production and gravitational behavior

The idea of ​​plants in space was invoked as early as the 19th century through short stories such as The Brick Moon by Edward Everett Hale in 1869.

Allan H. Brown tested the seedling movements aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia in 1983 . The movements of the sunflower seedlings were recorded in orbit. He observed that despite the lack of gravity, the seedlings still experienced rotational growth and circling, showing that these behaviors are instinctive.

In 1982 the crew of the Soviet space station Salyut 7 developed an experiment in which foam cresses were grown in a small greenhouse with the help of Fiton-3 . They became the first plants to be grown in space to produce seeds in space.

A study by Skylab looked at the effects of gravity and light . The SVET-2 Space Greenhouse is 1997 in Mir managed to carry out seed to seed plantings. Bion 5 managed to grow carrots and Bion 7 corn .

Other experiments have shown that plants have the ability to be gravitropistic even under the conditions of gravity. For example, European modular allows cultivation system of ESA experimenting with plant growth. In a small greenhouse, scientists on board the International Space Station can study how plants react under gravity conditions. The Gravi-1 experiment (2008) used the EMCS to study the growth of lentil seedlings and the movement of amyloplasts on the calcium-dependent pathways. The results of this experiment have shown that the plants can sense the direction of gravity even at a very low level. A later experiment with the EMCS placed 768 lens seedlings in a centrifuge to stimulate various gravitational changes. This 2014 Gravi-2 experiment showed that plants alter the calcium signal towards root growth while growing at multiple levels of gravity.

In 2007, NASA tested how trees grow on the Pico de Orizaba volcano to find out how it is possible to grow trees on Mars.

In 2014, as part of gravitational biology, several experiments were carried out on the behavior of plants under artificial weightlessness and rotation, as well as vertical plants on walls.

On earth, plant growth has already been studied in extreme weather regions such as the Antarctic .

Experiments in space

In the late 20th century and early 21st century, plants were brought into space in low Earth orbit to be grown in a weightless but pressurized environment sometimes called space gardens.

Vegetable production of the International Space Station is discussed.

In the 2010s there was an increased interest in longer space missions, which also increased the need for plants in space as a food source. One example is the vegetable production on the International Space Station . By 2010, 20 plant experiments were carried out on it.

Algae were sent into space by researchers from Bonn as early as 2003 to see how they orient themselves in weightlessness. In the summer of 2015, the crew of the International Space Station ate red romaine lettuce that had grown in space for the first time . The first nutrient pillows with lettuce seeds were activated by astronaut Steve Swanson in May 2014 and harvested after about a month. These samples, like the rest of the vegetables grown on the ISS, were sent back to earth and examined microbiologically until permission was then given for consumption.

In January 2016, the pinnacle on the International Space Station blossomed as the first flower in space after several previous experiments.

In 2017, the fifth harvest of Chinese cabbage (Brassica rapa) aboard the ISS in a plant growth device contained an allocation for crew consumption while the rest was saved for study purposes.

In 2017 the Advanced Plant Habitat for ISS was developed, which is an almost self-sufficient plant growth system for this space station in low earth orbit. The system is installed on board the Vegetable Production System ( VEGGIE for short ) station in parallel to another system installed in the plant . A key difference from this system is that APH is designed to require less human maintenance. APH is supported by the Plant Habitat Avionics Real-Time Manager . Plants that should be tested in APH include wheat and arabidopsis . In December 2017, hundreds of seeds were delivered to the ISS to grow in the VEGGIE system.

In 2018, the Veggie 3 experiment was tested with plant pillows and root mats. One of the goals is to grow food for crew consumption. Plants tested at this point were cabbage , lettuce, and mizuna . In 2018, the PONDS system for nutrient intake in weightlessness was also tested.
In October 2018, researchers from Bremen sent a satellite with a greenhouse with tomato seeds into space to investigate how tomatoes grow in space. The satellite creates gravity by rotating. It does this without a conventional drive. Instead, it uses the earth's magnetic field , from which it repels itself with the help of an electromagnetic coil . 16 cameras should record the events around the clock.

On January 15, 2019, the Chinese news agency Xinhua reported that Chinese researchers at Chongqing University succeeded in germinating cotton on the Chang'e-4 lunar probe , which also made a controlled landing on the far side of the moon for the first time in space travel history bring to. In addition to cotton, the researchers also other vegetable seeds and eggs of fruit flies and yeast sent to the moon. The aim is to build a mini biosphere .

Plants in space

Lettuce grows on board the ISS
Zinnia flies aboard the ISS

Well-known plants that can grow in space are:

Experiments

Illustration of plants growing on a hypothetical Mars station.

Well-known experiments for plants for space are:

  • Advanced Plant Habitat
  • Bion satellite
  • Biomass Production System, on board the ISS
  • Vegetable Production System (Veggie), on board the ISS.
  • SVET
  • SVET-2, on the Mir .
  • Lada Greenhouse (also Lada Validating Vegetable Production Unit)
  • ADVASC
  • DAY, on board the ISS.
  • Plant Growth / Plant Phototropism, on board Skylab
  • Oasis plant growth unit
  • Plant Signaling ( STS-135 )
  • Plant growth experiment ( STS-95 )
  • NASA Clean Air Study
  • ECOSTRESS, 2018

Search for alien plants

When it comes to the question of extraterrestrial life , not only animals or intelligent life forms, but also plants come into consideration. Researchers have therefore increasingly been looking for biopigments such as chlorophylls in space since the 2010s , which could prove the existence of plants and processes such as photosynthesis and which could be an indication of animal life.

The search for vegetation on other planets began with Gavriil Tikhov , who tried to discover extraterrestrial vegetation by analyzing the wavelengths of reflected light from a planet or planetary radiation. Photosynthetic pigments, like the chlorophylls of the earth, reflect light spectra in the range of 700–750 nm . It has been suggested that observing this peak would signal an area covered with green vegetation when reading planetary light. The search for extraterrestrial vegetation was expanded to include the search for microbial life on other planets. Mathematical models are used to predict the viability of exoplanets.

See also

Web links

Commons : Plants in space  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

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