Plants in Space: Photos by Gardening Astronauts

NASA astronaut Don Pettit’s sunflower blooms on the International Space Station as part of his personal biology experiment in 2012.

NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren (left) and Scott Kelly sample lettuce grown earlier with the Veg-01 experiment.

Astronauts on the International Space Station harvested a crop of “Outredgeous” red romaine lettuce from the Veggie plant growth system for growing vegetables and other plants in space.

NASA astronauts Scott Kelly (right) and Kjell Lindgren (center) with Kimiya Yui of JAXA snack on freshly harvested space-grown red romaine lettuce as part of the Veggie experiment.

NASA astronaut Steve Swanson holds a fistful of lettuce grown on the International Space Station as part of the Veggie experiment to test space crops in orbit.

The lettuce shown in this image was grown in the Vegetable Production System, harvested and eaten by the crew on June 16, 2014.

A 28-day-old Outredgeous red romaine lettuce leaf growing in a prototype spaceflight pillow.

A zucchini plant floats aboard the International Space Station. From Don Pettit’s blog: “This bag is mostly filled with air and only has a small amount of water neatly tucked in the corners from the action of capillary forces in weightlessness. This is aeroponics, a rather new method for raising plants without soil and without large volumes of water.” Image released April 3, 2012.

A zucchini sprout grows with four leaves aboard the International Space Station. Image released April 3, 2012.

A zucchini sprout begins to grow aboard the International Space Station. From Don Pettit’s blog: “I am zucchini — and I am in space.” Image released April 3, 2012.

A zucchini sprout grows larger aboard the International Space Station. Image released April 6, 2012.

A zucchini sprout begins to grow aboard the International Space Station. Image released April 6, 2012.

Astronaut Don Pettit described his zucchini growing experiment aboard the ISS in his blog. He writes: “We have two new crewmates, ‘Sunflower’ and ‘Broccoli’. Sunflower has a long stem for the size of his leaves. He is standing tall. Broccoli is small and weak. His sprout is so small that without the normal gravitational signals, surface tension forces keep his cotyledons from breaking free from the damp pigmat medium. Effectively, his first two leaves are glued down to a wet layer. Within a day or two mold takes over and the poor sprout dies. It grieves me to see them die. Life can be tough on the frontier.” Image released April 6, 2012.

This dwarf wheat was grown in space aboard the Mir space station.

Soyuz 5 Commander Sergei Zalyotin examines plants grown in the Lada growth chamber located in the Zvezda Service Module on the International Space Station. Since its inception, the Lada chamber has been used to repeatedly harvest fast-growing plants such as peas, mizuna (a Russian leafy vegetable), wheat, peppers and rice. Image

The Experiment Container with Plant Seedling Seed Cassettes (seedlings, inset lower right) is an example of the samples returning aboard the SpaceX Dragon vehicle for ground analysis.

A prototype version of Veggie with red romaine lettuce plants growing inside of it.

The Veggie experiment is used to grow lettuce on the International Space Station.

The Advanced Biological Research System spaceflight hardware showing the Petri plates with plants.

Astronaut Jeff Williams “harvests” an Arabidopsis plant on the International Space Station.

The zinnias on the International Space Station in December before the mold issue arose. The pillows in Veggie are labelled as such: Pillow A (top left), Pillow B (top right), Pillow C (middle left), Pillow D (middle right), Pillow E (bottom left) and Pillow F (bottom right).

(UPDATE for Feb. 8: They got better!) “Our plants aren’t looking too good,” NASA astronaut Scott Kelly tweeted along with this picture in late December.