April 24, 2003

Green Generations
Credit: The crew of ISS Expedition 6, NASA

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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.