What do I do with my hands, OK?
[UPBEAT MUSIC] Hey everyone, welcome to Snack Time with NASA.
I'm your host, Kathleen Gaeta.
Now, we've been exploring all the ways that NASA helps
get some of your favorite foods onto your plate.
And so far, all of those foods have been down here on Earth, obviously.
But we're NASA, right?
So while we may not be professional chefs, we do know a thing or two about space.
That's why today we'll be learning what it takes to grow food
two hundred miles above our heads onboard the International Space Station.
And later, we'll hear
how the space station helps us monitor the health of plants down here on Earth.
So let's get into it.
As you can see, I have a nice haul of greens right in front of me.
Some romaine lettuce, some bok choy, radishes, micro greens.
Now, I got all these ingredients for my local grocery store.
But actually, every single one of these plants is grown onboard the ISS.
And here to help explain how that happens is Matt Romeyn, Project Scientist
at the Kennedy Space Center. Matt, thank you so much for being here.
How's it going? Matt: Oh it's going good, glad to be here Kathleen.
Kathleen: So you sent me a list of vegetables that you work with,
and I'm wondering how you go about choosing
which foods to grow up in space?
Matt: We have to do a lot of crop screening. We're able to screen these crops and test them at our growth chambers
at Kennedy Space Center that are able to replicate the environmental conditions
on the International Space Station, except for microgravity.
We're looking for how productive they grow, growth for compact
morphologies and crops that are nutritious and flavorful.
Kathleen: OK, I have to ask, have you ever grown potatoes in space?
Matt: Well, we've been growing crops recently on ISIS - last five years or so.
We haven't had potatoes recently, but in the past we've done them
on the shuttle program
and we have grown them extensively on the ground at Kennedy Space Center.
Kathleen: I will eat a space potato in my lifetime, I promise you that.
Anyways, so you suggested I pick up some bok choy and mustard
greens, and I can't say those are typical salad ingredients for myself.
Matt: The bok choy is interesting because the crew recently
grew and got to eat that on the ISS and they really enjoyed it.
They actually found a way to cook it, using their food warmer
and combining some garlic paste, soy sauce, and bit of olive oil.
The mustard greens are great because they have a lot of strong flavors.
And when you're an astronaut on the ISS, with the microgravity,
you have a diminished sense of taste and smell.
So they like those bolder flavors that kind of punch through there.
Kathleen: Wow. I did not know that.
And now, do you also grow the same plants that you're growing in space down at KSC?
Matt: Yeah, well, we're growing plants in space on ISS, we also have ground controls
at KSC that
replicate the exact conditions on the ISS - the temperature, humidity, the CO2
levels, we can control for everything but the microgravity element.
Kathleen: Ok, and I assume that so that you can more closely monitor
the difference of plants growing in space versus on Earth.
What have you discovered in that process?
Matt: Well, we find that plants, for the most part, grow similar in space as on Earth.
A big variable is the water.
There's a lack of convective flow in space, and that makes water very
sticky. Plants like a good mix of water and oxygen in their root zone.
And when we have water that doesn't mix well with
oxygen, we get a lot of swinging back and forth between
the roots being flooded and being in a state of drought.
We have technologies that are working on that.
To solve that problem of microgravity.
Luckily, when we get to Mars and the moon, those problems mostly go away.
Kathleen: Got it. And so talk to me about this little space garden
I keep hearing of - the VEGGIE Growth System. What is that?
Yeah, the VEGGIE. We've got two of those on ISS,
And it's a real simple system.
It's about the size of a piece of carry-on luggage.
It uses LED lighting and has six little plant pillows in there
that are filled with growth medium, which is basically a soil substitute.
And that's how we're able to grow and propagate the plants on the ISS.
Kathleen: That's so interesting.
The vision of a space garden just brings a lot of joy to me
and I'm sure a lot of people.
Anyway, so is there a plant that you're kind of the most excited
about trying to grow in space?
Matt: Definitely peppers.
We actually just sent chili peppers to ISIS, that will be grown in the summer,
and we're excited about peppers because they are very challenging.
They take a long time to germinate.
They take a long time to grow, about 120 days.
And there's a real challenge with the flavor.
If we were to overwater them, they taste
like grass clippings. If we under water,
and we stress out a lot, they're really spicy.
So we're trying to really control to grow healthy plants
and flavorful plants that the crew wants to eat and enjoy.
Kathleen: Right. And you know what they say, if you can't take the heat,
get off the space station, right?
Just kidding, that's my dad joke of the day!
Well anyways, Matt I can't thank you enough for being here.
[Bark] I learned a lot, and I hope you all did as well.
And I can't wait to hear what you grow in space next! Matt: Thank you.
[Bark] Kathleen: Shut your little door, Buoy
So now that we know more about crops
aboard the space station, what about the crops
we study from the space station that live down here on Earth?
And for that, Christine Lee, Applications Lead for the ECOSTRESS
mission is here to talk to us.
Hey, Christine, thank you for being here.
Christine: Hi. Thank you. Glad to be here.
I was just talking with Matt about how the VEGGIE Lab on
the ISS helps us better understand how plants grow in microgravity.
And that's inspired all of the ingredients here for the salad.
But I also know that instruments
on the ISS help us better understand how plants grow down on Earth.
I'm wondering how that is?
Christine: Well, the instrument and projects that I work on, the Ecosystem Spaceborne
Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station, also known as ECOSTRESS,
collects thermal data from on board the International Space Station.
And we use this thermal data
to better understand vegetation water stress here on Earth.
And so we can apply this data in understanding crop water stress,
looking at drought across forests
in climate-vulnerable areas all around the world.
Kathleen: And so I know that we also look at the temperature of plants.
And I can't say I know why we do that?
Christine: We look at the temperature of plants because
plants contain a lot of water.
It's part of their process for photosynthesizing.
And the temperature is directly
related to the water content within those plants.
And so the hotter a plant gets, we can use that as an indicator of how
how healthy that particular plant is.
Kathleen: Got it. OK, so all this data is captured and collected.
Who then uses it?
Christine: Well, we have a wide variety of partners.
One of our key partners is the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
They utilize the data to better understand crop water stress across
different areas, primarily in the continental United States.
And they use this to understand and inform decisions
like irrigation and water management, as well as the onset of drought.
Kathleen: And so what advantages does ECOSTRESS get being on the ISS?
Christine: We love being on the International Space Station.
One of the really unique aspects of being on the ISIS
is that there's a variable overpass time.
And what that means is that instead of taking measurements at the same time,
during each overpass, the way we might with other polar
orbiting satellite missions, is that we actually get to take a snapshot
of temperatures and water stress at different times of day.
And what this then translates to
is being able to look at the peak of vegetation water stress,
which typically occurs in the mid to late afternoon.
This is something that has not been done before.
And being able to create this daily cycle of water stress
for vegetation at these spatial and temporal scales.
Kathleen: Well, it seems to me that instruments onboard the ISS are pretty crucial
when it comes to monitoring our human caused climate change. [DOG BARK]
Climate change is bad.
Christine: Yes, so the really great thing about ECOSTRESS is that it
complements these other instruments and other satellites like Landsat,
to create a continuous long-term record of the Earth system.
And right now, NASA is working on future missions that will build on these records
to provide climate scientists a holistic view of the Earth.
This provides us really unique insights to how vegetation
and forests around the world are reacting to environmental and climate stressors.
Kathleen: Well, you know, it's amazing to hear about all the science
that goes into growing plants both in space and on Earth.
And on that note, I'm ready to appreciate some of that science
by digging into this salad. Christine, thank you so much for being here.
I really appreciate it! And thank you all for watching. Cheers!
[DOG BARKING] You want salad?