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Space Station Science

Picture of the Day

April 24, 2003

Green Generations
Credit: The crew of ISS Expedition 6, NASA

April 24, 2003: It looks like an ordinary pea pod. And it is. That's
what so amazing ... because this pod lives in space. It's a traveling
companion of Cosmonaut Nikolai Budarin. Every day Budarin tends a
growing garden of these peas located within the Russian Lada
greenhouse onboard the International Space Station. 

The peas are part of an experiment to investigate plant development
and genetics. "Budarin is working with peas of two types," says
principal investigator Dr. Vladimir Sychev of the Institute of
Biomedical Problems in Moscow: "a flagellate variety with red
flowers (up to 27 cm high) and an acacia-leaf variety with white
flowers (up to 20 cm high). Both are dwarf peas from the plant
collection of the Moscow University Genetics Department." 

"The experiment has been going for six weeks," he continues, "and the
pea plants have now reached the stage of seed ripening. We expect
these seeds to mature in another 2 to 3 weeks. If everything goes as
planned, cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko (the commander of the next space
station crew) will plant the space seeds to grow a second generation
of space peas." 

Never before have peas flowered and produced offspring in
Earth-orbit.

It's an important first because "legumes, including peas, can be used
in biological life support systems for spaceships," adds Sychev. They
can provide oxygen and food for astronauts and, in tandem with
microbes, help purify water and human waste. The ability of such
plants to reproduce generation after generation is key for long space
voyages. 

One day there will be generations of people in space, too. These
little peas are leading the way.

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