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- Can Life Survive In Space
- Survive In Space Cracked
- How Long Survive In Space
- Can Plants Survive In Space
Earlier this month, tiny green plants sprouted on the moon.
The plants arrived as cotton seeds, tucked inside of Chang'e 4, a Chinese spacecraft that had landed, in a historic first, on the far side of the moon, the side that never turns toward Earth. The seeds came with the comforts of home: water, air, soil, and a heating system for warmth. Huddled together, the seedlings resembled a miniature, deep-green forest. A hint of life on a barren world.
A new study reveals that clumps of bacteria managed to survive on the outside of the International Space Station — completely exposed to the harsh conditions of outer space — by hiding. Survive in Space is a skill-based space shooter with a hardcore focus on gameplay mechanics. You take on the role of Sasaki, a young soldier who discovers the horrible truth of humanity's enslavement at the hands of the alien Chronicles during a routine mission. His deep anguish leads him to spiral into depression, and in the darkest depths. When the space shuttle Columbia broke up after re-entering Earth's atmosphere in 2003, there were nematodes on board: they survived both the disintegration and the fall back to Earth.
And then, about a week later, they all died.
Lunar night had set in. Without ample sunlight, surface temperatures near the spacecraft plummeted to –52 degrees Celsius (–62 degrees Fahrenheit). The sprouts' heating system wasn't designed to last. The plants froze.
Outer space, as you might expect, is not kind to plants, or people, or most living things, except maybe for tardigrades, those microscopic creatures that look like little bears. If you stuck a daisy out of the International Space Station and exposed it to the vacuum of space, it would perish immediately. The water in its cells would rush out and dissipate as vapor, leaving behind a freeze-dried flower.
China's experiment marked the first time biological matter has been grown on the moon. (There is biological matter on the moon already, in what NASA politely refers to as 'defecation collection devices.') But plants have blossomed in space for years. They just need a little more care and attention than their terrestrial peers.
Recommended Reading
The Microbes Making Themselves at Home on the Space Station
Marina KorenFuture Smartphones Will Tell You What's Killing Your Plants
Ed YongEverything You Never Thought to Ask About Astronaut Food
Marina Koren
Recommended Reading
The Microbes Making Themselves at Home on the Space Station
Marina KorenFuture Smartphones Will Tell You What's Killing Your Plants
Ed YongEverything You Never Thought to Ask About Astronaut Food
Marina Koren
The first to flourish in space was Arabidopsis thaliana, a spindly plant with white flowers, in 1982, aboard Salyut, a now defunct Russian space station. Myst masterpiece edition mac. The inaugural plant species was chosen for practical reasons; scientists call Arabidopsis thaliana the fruit fly of plant science, thanks to a fairly quick life cycle that allows for many analyses in a short time.
Now, plants grow on the International Space Station, humankind's sole laboratory above Earth. They are cultivated inside special chambers equipped with artificial lights pretending to be the sun. Seeds are planted in nutrient-rich substance resembling cat litter and strewn with fertilizer pellets. Water, unable to flow on its own, is administered carefully and precisely to roots. In microgravity, gases sometimes coalesce into bubbles, and overhead, fans push the air around to keep the carbon dioxide and oxygen flowing.
The most advanced chamber on the station, about the size of a mini fridge, has precise sensors monitoring the conditions inside, and all astronauts need to do is add water and change filters. Scientists back on the ground can control everything, from the temperature and humidity to levels of oxygen and carbon dioxide.
Plants did not evolve to exist in this unusual setup. But astronauts have grown several varieties of lettuce, radishes, peas, zinnias, and sunflowers, and they do just fine. 'Plants are very adaptive, and they have to be—they can't run away,' says Gioia Massa, a scientist at NASA's Kennedy Space Center who studies plants in microgravity.
Scientists were surprised to learn that the lack of gravity, the force that has shaped our biological processes, doesn't derail plants' development. On Earth, plants produce a filigree-like pattern of roots, as they grow away from their seeds in search of nutrients. Scientists had long assumed the movements were influenced, in part, by the force of gravity. On the International Space Station, roots exhibited the same pattern, without gravity as a guide.
'Plants don't really care about the gravity so much if you can get the environment right,' Massa says.
Can Life Survive In Space
For NASA, the growth chambers on the space station are the predecessors of extraterrestrial farms beyond Earth. If human beings ever travel to another planet, they will need enough food for the journey. NASA has spent years perfecting thermo-stabilized or freeze-dried entrées and snacks for astronauts on the International Space Station, from scrambled eggs to chicken teriyaki. The meals are meant to last, but they wouldn't survive the long journey to Mars, says Julie Robinson, the chief scientist for the International Space Station.
'We don't have a system today that would preserve all the nutrients in food for all that time, even if it was frozen,' Robinson says.
Future Mars astronauts will likely bring with them an assortment of seeds, a Svalbard-like vault to kick-start the first generations of crops. None will be able to grow in Martian soil, which resembles volcanic ash; it's devoid of the organic matter—formed on Earth by generations of decomposed plants—that supports life. It also contains chemical compounds that are toxic to humans. Astronauts could flush out the toxins with their own chemical solutions and convert the soil into something workable, but it may be easier to replicate the growth chambers on the International Space Station instead.
On Mars, plants will likely grow in climate-controlled greenhouses, from nutrient-rich gels and under bright lighting, with water delivered through liquid solutions at their roots or by a fine mist released from the ceiling. And anyone living on Mars will need many of these alien gardens; you can't grow a salad from a petri dish.
Astronauts have already made a space salad. In 2015, astronauts on the space station were allowed to try the leaves of a red romaine lettuce that was cultivated in NASA's first fresh-food growth chamber. They added a little balsamic dressing and took a bite. 'That's awesome,' the NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren said then. 'Tastes good.'
No one on Earth has sampled a space vegetable yet, according to Massa. Some plants grown on the station are sent down to the ground for study in the lab, but they usually come back frozen or preserved in a chemical solution. 'Frozen would be better, but I don't think lettuce popsicles will be very popular anytime soon,' she says.
NASA scientists are thinking about more than nutrition in these experiments. Growing plants just for the sake of growing plants is quite nice. Research has shown that gardening is soothing and can be beneficial for good mental health. Future deep-space astronauts, cooped up in a small spaceship for years with the same people, will need all the soothing activities they can find. Plants, especially flowers, grown not for consumption but for decoration may help far-flung astronauts feel connected to the comforts of Earth.
'There's a great deal of joy in growing and watering the plants and producing a flower,' Robinson, the ISS scientist, says. 'There can also be some real sadness if plants you've been cultivating are not successful and are dying on you.'
Anyone who has enthusiastically purchased a succulent and witnessed it inexplicably wilt days later might relate. Crypt of the necrodancer cracked. Imagine the magnitude of that disappointment on Mars, where the closest store is all the way across the solar system, and the only option is to grow another one.
Meet Nidhi Mayurika, a class IX student studying at Narayana Olympiad School in Bengaluru who, with her incredible innovations like a three-layered space colony and a satellite to launch another satellite, has been winning the NASA Ames Space Settlement Contest for three years now. She is full of energy and the sky is the limit for her imagination and calculations. While many of us have to open the dictionary to search for the meaning of space-related terminology, she has all of them on the tip of her tongue. After so much of groundwork about space and its elements, she aims to become a cosmologist and represent India on an international platform.
When Nidhi was 11, she felt that the creation of the universe was a strange phenomenon and this curiosity led her to find out and learn more about it. She says, 'When I was in class V, I'd always take part in the science competitions held at the school level. Considering my interest, my school principal told me about the NASA Ames Space Settlement Contest. I had two reasons for participating in this contest. Firstly, this was a platform for me to express myself, my ideas about space and its elements. The other reason is that I wanted to represent my country. After all, we Indians have been able to prove many theories with the power of imagination alone like the Theory of Parmanu(atom), solar systems and many more.'
My parents and elder brother played a major role in my success. We have had discussions every day on the information to be added to my project. While my mother named all the three projects, my father edited and animated the space colony models for all the three years. I was also guided by N Chandrashekar Rao who is our physics HOD
Nidhi Mayurika
Survive In Space Cracked
In 2016, when the organisers of the NASA contest announced that the students must design something on the lines of the virtual space colonies in which settlers can live inside a gigantic spacecraft, Nidhi spent more than two hours a day, after school, working on a project called Saikatam — which translates to a new home away from home. 'Saikatam is a three-layered space colony for human settlement at Earth-Moon Lagrange Point 5 situated at 3,85,000 km. It is a space colony for humans to survive, evolve and self-sustain. The space colony is akin to Earth with life gases, artificial gravity, water, and food,' she explains.
Needless to say, Nidhi's efforts and the time she spent paid off. She won the first prize for Saikatam. In the 2017 NASA contest, she participated again and her project bagged the first prize again. This time it was for the project Soham, which is used to launch satellites. She says, 'Soham is a habitable space colony located 350 km away from Earth at LEO, to build and launch satellites, comprising of an Inflatable Space Station.'
SPACE VIEW: Nidhi Mayurika has won the NASA Ames Space Settlement Contest thrice for her innovative projects on space
Nidhi's third project, which she presented this year, was Swastikam — a place for creation. 'Swastikam is a space colony built for synthetically designed and created organisms to adapt, evolve and be independent in the new ecosystem. This helps organisms adapt to change in conditions such as radiation, heat, continuous daylight and lack of gravity,' she explains patiently.
It is not just the books and the hours Nidhi spent after school that has helped her come this far at such a young age. She has taken up online programmes relating to the universe from The University of Edinburgh, the Australian National University, Boston University and many more. She says, 'The lectures gave me a lot of information, helped me with innovative ideas about space colonies and also gave me problem statements to do the project every year.'
How Long Survive In Space
And then, about a week later, they all died.
Lunar night had set in. Without ample sunlight, surface temperatures near the spacecraft plummeted to –52 degrees Celsius (–62 degrees Fahrenheit). The sprouts' heating system wasn't designed to last. The plants froze.
Outer space, as you might expect, is not kind to plants, or people, or most living things, except maybe for tardigrades, those microscopic creatures that look like little bears. If you stuck a daisy out of the International Space Station and exposed it to the vacuum of space, it would perish immediately. The water in its cells would rush out and dissipate as vapor, leaving behind a freeze-dried flower.
China's experiment marked the first time biological matter has been grown on the moon. (There is biological matter on the moon already, in what NASA politely refers to as 'defecation collection devices.') But plants have blossomed in space for years. They just need a little more care and attention than their terrestrial peers.
Recommended Reading
The Microbes Making Themselves at Home on the Space Station
Marina KorenFuture Smartphones Will Tell You What's Killing Your Plants
Ed YongEverything You Never Thought to Ask About Astronaut Food
Marina Koren
Recommended Reading
The Microbes Making Themselves at Home on the Space Station
Marina KorenFuture Smartphones Will Tell You What's Killing Your Plants
Ed YongEverything You Never Thought to Ask About Astronaut Food
Marina Koren
The first to flourish in space was Arabidopsis thaliana, a spindly plant with white flowers, in 1982, aboard Salyut, a now defunct Russian space station. Myst masterpiece edition mac. The inaugural plant species was chosen for practical reasons; scientists call Arabidopsis thaliana the fruit fly of plant science, thanks to a fairly quick life cycle that allows for many analyses in a short time.
Now, plants grow on the International Space Station, humankind's sole laboratory above Earth. They are cultivated inside special chambers equipped with artificial lights pretending to be the sun. Seeds are planted in nutrient-rich substance resembling cat litter and strewn with fertilizer pellets. Water, unable to flow on its own, is administered carefully and precisely to roots. In microgravity, gases sometimes coalesce into bubbles, and overhead, fans push the air around to keep the carbon dioxide and oxygen flowing.
The most advanced chamber on the station, about the size of a mini fridge, has precise sensors monitoring the conditions inside, and all astronauts need to do is add water and change filters. Scientists back on the ground can control everything, from the temperature and humidity to levels of oxygen and carbon dioxide.
Plants did not evolve to exist in this unusual setup. But astronauts have grown several varieties of lettuce, radishes, peas, zinnias, and sunflowers, and they do just fine. 'Plants are very adaptive, and they have to be—they can't run away,' says Gioia Massa, a scientist at NASA's Kennedy Space Center who studies plants in microgravity.
Scientists were surprised to learn that the lack of gravity, the force that has shaped our biological processes, doesn't derail plants' development. On Earth, plants produce a filigree-like pattern of roots, as they grow away from their seeds in search of nutrients. Scientists had long assumed the movements were influenced, in part, by the force of gravity. On the International Space Station, roots exhibited the same pattern, without gravity as a guide.
'Plants don't really care about the gravity so much if you can get the environment right,' Massa says.
Can Life Survive In Space
For NASA, the growth chambers on the space station are the predecessors of extraterrestrial farms beyond Earth. If human beings ever travel to another planet, they will need enough food for the journey. NASA has spent years perfecting thermo-stabilized or freeze-dried entrées and snacks for astronauts on the International Space Station, from scrambled eggs to chicken teriyaki. The meals are meant to last, but they wouldn't survive the long journey to Mars, says Julie Robinson, the chief scientist for the International Space Station.
'We don't have a system today that would preserve all the nutrients in food for all that time, even if it was frozen,' Robinson says.
Future Mars astronauts will likely bring with them an assortment of seeds, a Svalbard-like vault to kick-start the first generations of crops. None will be able to grow in Martian soil, which resembles volcanic ash; it's devoid of the organic matter—formed on Earth by generations of decomposed plants—that supports life. It also contains chemical compounds that are toxic to humans. Astronauts could flush out the toxins with their own chemical solutions and convert the soil into something workable, but it may be easier to replicate the growth chambers on the International Space Station instead.
On Mars, plants will likely grow in climate-controlled greenhouses, from nutrient-rich gels and under bright lighting, with water delivered through liquid solutions at their roots or by a fine mist released from the ceiling. And anyone living on Mars will need many of these alien gardens; you can't grow a salad from a petri dish.
Astronauts have already made a space salad. In 2015, astronauts on the space station were allowed to try the leaves of a red romaine lettuce that was cultivated in NASA's first fresh-food growth chamber. They added a little balsamic dressing and took a bite. 'That's awesome,' the NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren said then. 'Tastes good.'
No one on Earth has sampled a space vegetable yet, according to Massa. Some plants grown on the station are sent down to the ground for study in the lab, but they usually come back frozen or preserved in a chemical solution. 'Frozen would be better, but I don't think lettuce popsicles will be very popular anytime soon,' she says.
NASA scientists are thinking about more than nutrition in these experiments. Growing plants just for the sake of growing plants is quite nice. Research has shown that gardening is soothing and can be beneficial for good mental health. Future deep-space astronauts, cooped up in a small spaceship for years with the same people, will need all the soothing activities they can find. Plants, especially flowers, grown not for consumption but for decoration may help far-flung astronauts feel connected to the comforts of Earth.
'There's a great deal of joy in growing and watering the plants and producing a flower,' Robinson, the ISS scientist, says. 'There can also be some real sadness if plants you've been cultivating are not successful and are dying on you.'
Anyone who has enthusiastically purchased a succulent and witnessed it inexplicably wilt days later might relate. Crypt of the necrodancer cracked. Imagine the magnitude of that disappointment on Mars, where the closest store is all the way across the solar system, and the only option is to grow another one.
Meet Nidhi Mayurika, a class IX student studying at Narayana Olympiad School in Bengaluru who, with her incredible innovations like a three-layered space colony and a satellite to launch another satellite, has been winning the NASA Ames Space Settlement Contest for three years now. She is full of energy and the sky is the limit for her imagination and calculations. While many of us have to open the dictionary to search for the meaning of space-related terminology, she has all of them on the tip of her tongue. After so much of groundwork about space and its elements, she aims to become a cosmologist and represent India on an international platform.
When Nidhi was 11, she felt that the creation of the universe was a strange phenomenon and this curiosity led her to find out and learn more about it. She says, 'When I was in class V, I'd always take part in the science competitions held at the school level. Considering my interest, my school principal told me about the NASA Ames Space Settlement Contest. I had two reasons for participating in this contest. Firstly, this was a platform for me to express myself, my ideas about space and its elements. The other reason is that I wanted to represent my country. After all, we Indians have been able to prove many theories with the power of imagination alone like the Theory of Parmanu(atom), solar systems and many more.'
My parents and elder brother played a major role in my success. We have had discussions every day on the information to be added to my project. While my mother named all the three projects, my father edited and animated the space colony models for all the three years. I was also guided by N Chandrashekar Rao who is our physics HOD
Nidhi Mayurika
Survive In Space Cracked
In 2016, when the organisers of the NASA contest announced that the students must design something on the lines of the virtual space colonies in which settlers can live inside a gigantic spacecraft, Nidhi spent more than two hours a day, after school, working on a project called Saikatam — which translates to a new home away from home. 'Saikatam is a three-layered space colony for human settlement at Earth-Moon Lagrange Point 5 situated at 3,85,000 km. It is a space colony for humans to survive, evolve and self-sustain. The space colony is akin to Earth with life gases, artificial gravity, water, and food,' she explains.
Needless to say, Nidhi's efforts and the time she spent paid off. She won the first prize for Saikatam. In the 2017 NASA contest, she participated again and her project bagged the first prize again. This time it was for the project Soham, which is used to launch satellites. She says, 'Soham is a habitable space colony located 350 km away from Earth at LEO, to build and launch satellites, comprising of an Inflatable Space Station.'
SPACE VIEW: Nidhi Mayurika has won the NASA Ames Space Settlement Contest thrice for her innovative projects on space
Nidhi's third project, which she presented this year, was Swastikam — a place for creation. 'Swastikam is a space colony built for synthetically designed and created organisms to adapt, evolve and be independent in the new ecosystem. This helps organisms adapt to change in conditions such as radiation, heat, continuous daylight and lack of gravity,' she explains patiently.
It is not just the books and the hours Nidhi spent after school that has helped her come this far at such a young age. She has taken up online programmes relating to the universe from The University of Edinburgh, the Australian National University, Boston University and many more. She says, 'The lectures gave me a lot of information, helped me with innovative ideas about space colonies and also gave me problem statements to do the project every year.'
How Long Survive In Space
Can Plants Survive In Space
With Nidhi's innovations, it feels like India will have its youngest cosmologist by 2020 and who knows, we might even create an artificial place to live in space — designed by a girl from namma Bengaluru!
