SEEEEEEEEEDs in SPAAAAAAAAACE

Posted by MacDood
Cool NASA photos and streaming movies of plant experiments on the International Space Station:

One month ago, these peas were full of life and vivid green. Now they're brown and dry; they've "gone to seed." It happens in gardens on Earth all the time. These seeds are special, however, because they were grown in space, inside the Russian Lada greenhouse onboard the International Space Station (ISS). On May 16th, ISS commander Yuri Malenchenko took the brown plants (pictured above is just one of many) and stored them whole in ziplock bags filled with silica gel. Later they'll be taken out again, the seeds harvested and planted to grow a second generation of space-peas. If all goes well they'll become the first legumes to reproduce in Earth-orbit. This is the fifth "seed-to-seed" experiment conducted by Russian researchers. They've grown Arabidopsis onboard a Salyut spacecraft, turnip greens and wheat onboard Mir, and now peas on the International Space Station.

Link, Discuss [Boing Boing]