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After veggies, flowers to bloom in space

Now they are all set to declare flowers lush in space.

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Astronauts aboard the worldwide Space Station (ISS) have already harvested a crop of “Outredgeous” red romaine lettuce on the orbital laboratory.

On Monday morning, November 16, astronaut Kjell Lindgren activated what is known as the Veggie plant growth system and its rooting “pillows”.

Zinnia belongs to a sunflower clan in a daisy family.

According to NASA this would be the first attempt ever made to grow flowering plants in an orbiting lab. Gioia Massa, a scientist working for the NASA Kennedy Space Centre explained that this is mostly because of the more challenging nature of flowering crops, which are harder to grow than vegetative crops like lettuce. Lighting and other environmental parameters can critically change the way a flowering crop evolves.

Lindgren will turn on the red, blue and green LED lights, activate the water and nutrient system to Veggie, and monitor the plant growth.

“Growing the Zinnia plants will help advance our knowledge of how plants flower in the Veggie growth system, and will enable fruiting plants like tomatoes to be grown and eaten in space using Veggie as the in-orbit garden”, said Trent Smith, Veggie program manager. NASA plans to grow tomato plants in space in 2017. Developed by Orbital Technologies Corp, a Veggie system, along with one set of Zinnias and dual sets of pillows containing romaine seeds, was sent to a space station by a SpaceX resupply goal in April 2014.

The United States space group believes that carrying uninformed food accessible in space will expected boost astronomers’ moods. It will also assistance yield insurance opposite space radiation.

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The goal of the One-Year Mission is to better understand how spending long periods of time in the harsh and stressful environment of space impacts the human body and mind.

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