Growing Drugs in Space: GotG17
Join Emma the Space Gardener as she explores gardening on Earth… and beyond! In this episode, Emma recaps important spacecraft Arrivals and Departures and learns about growing nutrients and medicines in space. There’s a new plant experiment running on the International Space Station, and exciting news from ESA.
Earth is celebrating Chinese New Year and entering the Year of the Ox. Mars has just celebrated it’s own New Year, with the start of Year 36.
The UAE’s Hope probe and China’s Tianwen-1 orbiter have both successfully reached Mars. NASA’s Perseverance rover is set to touch down on 18th Feb. NG-15, named after Katherine Johnson, will blast off to the ISS on 20th Feb, bearing Magnitude.io’s Leguminauts experiment.
ESA is recruiting a new class of astronaut candidates this spring, and launching the Parastronaut Feasibility Project.
On the ISS, the crew has started a new crop in Veggie, worked on the BioNutrients experiment, which is working towards growing human nutrients, and started a Plant Water Management experiment to explore passive ways of keeping space plants fed and watered.
Discover magazine has an article about the Center for the Utilisation of Biological Engineering in Space (CUBES), a project which is creating plants that grow medicines for astronauts, and the MELiSSA Space Research Program is partnering with QinetiQ (KINETIC) and CAPACITÉS to demonstrate cultivating and harvesting spirulina algae in zero-gravity conditions.
And as we continue through Black History Month, Emma explores whether Guy Bluford, the first African-American in space, became a space gardener.
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