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. | 
