NASA: Grows flowers in space for first time

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station have been successfully growing vegetables for some time now, and researchers aboard the space station are now ready to take the next step: flowering crops.

Flowers could be blooming on the International Space Station (ISS) after the New Year, thanks to NASA's first flowering crop experiment on the orbiting laboratory. To grow the flowers specifically, zinnias, a type of daisy in space, NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren switched on Veggie, an optimized growing system developed by the space administration, and planting each with a pillow pack made out of Kevlar to help them root.

It is the very first time a flowering crop experiment will take place on the orbiting laboratory. Growing Zinnias in orbit will assist in supplying precursory data on other flowering plants that might be grown in space

"Growing a flowering crop is more challenging than growing a vegetative crop such as lettuce," said Gioia Massa, NASA Kennedy Space Centre payload scientist for Veggie.

"Lighting and other environmental parameters are more critical," said Massa.

Lindgren will turn on the red, blue and green LED lights, activate the water and nutrient system to Veggie, and monitor the plant growth. 

"The farther and longer humans go away from Earth, the greater the need to be able to grow plants for food, atmosphere recycling and psychological benefits," she concluded. "Plant systems will become important components of any long-duration exploration scenario.

How to make flowering crops grow in space

To make the flowering crops grow, LED lights will be on for 10 hours and off for 14 hours, replicating the light cycle of a standard day in temperate latitudes.
“Growing the Zinnia plants will help advance our knowledge of how plants flower in the Veggie growth system, and will enable fruiting plants like tomatoes to be grown and eaten in space using Veggie as the in-orbit garden,” said Trent Smith, Veggie program manager at Kennedy.

The Veggie system was created by Orbital Technologies in Madison, Wisconsin, and tested at Kennedy Space Center before being sent into space. The Veggie system, together with two sets of pillows filled with either romaine or zinnia seeds, was sent to the station by SpaceX on the third cargo resupply mission in April 2014.

The NASA researchers said they also hope to collect good information regarding long-duration seed storage, if pollen might be a problem, and the effects of the plants on crew morale.

NASA said it plans to grow tomato plants on the space station in 2017.