Space plants

In the acclaimed Ridley Scott movie The Martian (based on Andy Weir's bestseller), when Matt Damon's astronaut cum botanist character is stranded on Mars after a freak storm, he has to find ways to survive on the hostile Red Planet at least until a rescue mission arrives. That could well be years away, so Damon has to experiment with planting edible fruits and vegetables on Mars. This is not so improbable as it sounds - there are real, viable plans to 'terraform' Mars to resemble Earth over a period of thousands of years.

This is of course a glimpse of mankind's future - someday we will have to grow plants on other planets in the solar system and elsewhere as we explore other habitable planets. But before taking that huge leap, we have to take the first baby steps on growing plants in space immediately outside the Earth itself.

Zinnia

NASA has done just that. Over the weekend, US astronaut Scott Kelly on board the International Space Station (ISS) showed off several zinnia flowers he had grown and coaxed back to health. This has, in fact, been done before as well but not on the same scale. The zinnias are the first flowers grown from start to finish during an official NASA ISS mission. NASA's first bloom had a much quirkier origin: In 2012, astronaut Don Pettit grew several plants (including a sunflower) in plastic bags he had taken on board. The tiny blossom did not fare well, but it did technically bloom.

There are reports that Russian cosmonauts produced flowers several times in the pre-ISS days of spaceflight.

It seems that in at least one case, the entire growth process occurred during flight, in space. That was a lettuce plant, which are generally remarkably resilient to changes in habitat. Not to be outdone, the European Space Agency tested the ingredients for Kombucha - a fermented tea beverage invented thousands of years ago - on the ISS, exposing it to the harsh environment of space to see how it fares.

Space

All these efforts are significant in that they have succeeded in growing Earth-bond plants in the zero gravity environment of space. This was NASA's first concentrated and official effort to grow flowering plants in a controlled space environment. Since most flowers cannot be eaten on their own, the ultimate hope is that experience with plants like zinnias will help astronauts to learn how to grow more traditionally edible flowering plants like tomatoes.

NASA recently reported that the gardening experience had helped the space teams learn a lot of new things. The flowers were planted after two rounds of lettuce and managed first by NASA's Kjell Lindgren. By the time Lindgren headed back to Earth and Kelly took over, the plants were not doing well. They showed signs of excess humidity and root flooding.

At one point, Kelly had told the mission team back home that he wanted permission to water the crops. The team agreed and gave him a set of general guidelines to replace their precise instructions and Kelly became an autonomous "space farmer" (Watch out for that term in the future). Since then, the zinnias have slowly come back to health.

The experiment is important in several ways. Studying the weirdness of these "microgravity flowers" will help scientists design better growing equipment and procedures, which could make it possible for astronauts to rely on fresh crops during long term spaceflight missions, say to Mars and beyond.

It could also lead to new agricultural techniques even on Earth as lands allocated for agriculture run out. Scientists say the process of caring for a delicate plant can help improve the morale of a space crew and reduce their stress, given that live pets such as cats and dogs cannot be taken on board. And thanks to modern communications technology practically the whole world can monitor the plants' progress in real time and even offer advice.

The only caveat is that in the future, we might not need to grow food at all - we will be able to simply make them or rather print them. In fact, 3D food printers such as the ChefJet Pro that can print simple foods already exist. Some of them cost only around Rs.50,000 (approx) which is a far cry from what they used to cost. Granted, they can only make a few foods (pancakes, jelly moulds, candies, chocolate, cookies etc) at the moment but the possibilities for making more complex foods are endless as the technology gets more advanced.

There is already a prototype 3D pasta printer from the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) and manufacturer Barilla. Described as a "world first", the printer is capable of producing pasta in unique shapes and is currently able to print every four elements every two minutes. The printed pasta is prepared using the classic durum wheat, semolina and water formulation - and so is no different to regularly produced pasta.

Vegetarian

Despite the many benefits of being a vegetarian, there are plenty of people who like to eat meat. But it may not be possible to take livestock on future space journeys - so there is a lot of research into synthetic meat (some of which may be printed in a 3D printer).

The most common method is obtaining Cultured, or in vitro, meat from edible muscle (and perhaps fat) tissue grown from animal stem cells. Also called "meat without murder" and in-vitro meat, this is an exciting research area with obvious benefits for space travel. But there are benefits that can be experienced here on Earth too - the new process of cultured, or in vitro, meat production will be an environmentally friendly alternative to livestock rearing and will reduce the greenhouse gas emissions, energy consumption, land use, and water use associated with meat production. There are critics who question the allocation of billions of dollars for space research, but do remember that many space technologies have eventually filtered down to Earth.

There are certain examples even in this article. Thus the simple blooming of a flower in space could immensely benefit mankind in the long term.