European Space Agency – Education Payload Operations – Greenhouse (ESA-EPO-Greenhouse)
Research Area: Education
Expeditions: 25 and 26
Principal Investigator(s): ● Shamim Hartevelt, HSO Promotion Office, ESA/ESTEC,
Noordwijk, Netherlands
RESEARCH OBJECTIVES
The European Space Agency – Education Payload
Operations – Greenhouse (ESA-EPO-Greenhouse)
introduces the idea that space explorers might
need to be able to produce fresh food and
become partially self-reliant to survive long-
duration space missions. This idea targeted
European children ages 12-14 years old and links
this concept to the biology and science
curriculum. By demonstrating the idea that
greenhouses can be specially developed to
support plant growth for food and following the
life cycle of a flowering plant on the International
Space Station (ISS), school children are able to
follow with their own similar control experiment
on the ground to see how plants can be grown
and used in space.
RESULTS
This investigation began February 17, 2011;
following 3 weeks of steady growth in space
under the watchful eye of ISS crew member
Paolo Nespoli, the Arabidopsis plants (small
flowering plants related to cabbage and mustard)
found a new and unexpected travelling
companion: fungus. The ISS ecosystem is a particularly delicate one. Whereas some fungi does
not cause much harm to earthly plants or humans, the balance of the closed systems in the
station could be compromised.
It is known that spaceflight reduces the crew’s immune systems, their ability to fight off
infections; once safety experts had confirmed that a fungus was growing in the greenhouse, by
mid-March 2011, the unavoidable decision was made to carefully remove the greenhouse from
the ISS, thus avoiding any probability of causing any harm to the astronauts.
Paolo Nespoli was the first one to remark that simple procedures on Earth are extremely
complex and possibly dangerous in weightlessness. “Part of the experiment was indeed a
success: we were able to grow the plants and observe them.” Even though the in-orbit
Students involved in constructing greenhouses
and planting seeds. ESA images.