On 10th June, thousands of scientists worldwide went on strike, putting their research activities on hold for a day to reflect and take action on systemic inequalities in science. #ShutDownStem was part of the wider Black Lives Matter protests, forcing us to take a long, hard look at how systemic racism affects people of colour.
This has become a time to showcase and promote the work of Black people, whether they are artists, writers, cooks or scientists. One post I saw contained a link to a PDF file documenting NASA’s African American astronauts, and I thought it would be fun to find out whether any of them had the opportunity to become space gardeners. It’s going to take me a while to go through them all.
The list is ordered alphabetically by surname, so first up is Michael P. Anderson. Michael became an astronaut in December 1994 and spent more than 24 days in space on two space shuttle missions. He was a mission specialist on STS-89. Launched on 22 January 1998, space shuttle Endeavour completed the eighth Shuttle-to-Mir Space Station docking mission, delivering scientific equipment, logistical hardware, and water. This was also the fifth and final exchange of a US astronaut, dropping off Andy Thomas and bringing David Wolf back to Earth.
From what I have been able to learn, there were two astrobotany experiments onboard, and I know that Michael worked with both of them.
The CEBAS (Closed Equilibrated Biological Aquatic System) was a freshwater habitat that aimed to be a self-stabilising, artificial ecosystem for use in space and underground. It was based on prototypes of aquatic systems of different sizes developed and built at the CEBAS Center of Excellence at the University of Bochum in Germany.
Tests on the ground
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