Snack Time with NASA: Space Salad

Snack Time with NASA: Space Salad

Narration:

Transcript:

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What do I do with my hands, OK?

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[UPBEAT MUSIC]

Hey everyone, welcome to Snack Time with NASA.

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I'm your host, Kathleen Gaeta.

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Now, we've been exploring all the ways that NASA helps

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get some of your favorite foods onto your plate.

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And so far, all of those foods have been down here on Earth, obviously.

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But we're NASA, right?

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So while we may not be professional chefs,

we do know a thing or two about space.

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That's why today we'll be learning

what it takes to grow food

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two hundred miles above our heads

onboard the International Space Station.

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And later, we'll hear

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how the space station helps us monitor

the health of plants down here on Earth.

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So let's get into it.

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As you can see, I have a nice haul of greens right in front of me.

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Some romaine lettuce, some bok choy, radishes, micro greens.

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Now, I got all these ingredients for my local grocery store.

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But actually, every single one of these plants is grown onboard the ISS.

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And here to help explain how that happens is Matt Romeyn, Project Scientist

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at the Kennedy Space Center. Matt, thank you so much for being here.

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How's it going?

Matt: Oh it's going good, glad to be here Kathleen.

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Kathleen: So you sent me a list of vegetables that you work with,

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and I'm wondering how you go about choosing

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which foods to grow up in space?

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Matt: We have to do a lot of crop screening. We're able to screen these crops and test them at our growth chambers

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at Kennedy Space Center that are able to replicate the environmental conditions

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on the International Space Station, except for microgravity.

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We're looking for how productive they grow, growth for compact

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morphologies and crops that are nutritious and flavorful.

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Kathleen: OK, I have to ask, have you ever grown potatoes in space?

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Matt: Well, we've been growing crops recently on ISIS - last five years or so.

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We haven't had potatoes recently, but in the past we've done them

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on the shuttle program

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and we have grown them extensively on the ground at Kennedy Space Center.

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Kathleen: I will eat a space potato in my lifetime, I promise you that.

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Anyways, so you suggested I pick up some bok choy and mustard

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greens, and I can't say those are typical salad ingredients for myself.

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Matt: The bok choy is interesting because the crew recently

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grew and got to eat that on the ISS and they really enjoyed it.

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They actually found a way to cook it, using their food warmer

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and combining some garlic paste, soy sauce, and bit of olive oil.

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The mustard greens are great because they have a lot of strong flavors.

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And when you're an astronaut on the ISS, with the microgravity,

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you have a diminished sense of taste and smell.

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So they like those bolder flavors that kind of punch through there.

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Kathleen: Wow. I did not know that.

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And now, do you also grow the same plants

that you're growing in space down at KSC?

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Matt: Yeah, well, we're growing plants in space on ISS, we also have ground controls

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at KSC that

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replicate the exact conditions on the ISS - the temperature, humidity, the CO2

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levels, we can control for everything but the microgravity element.

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Kathleen: Ok, and I assume that so that you can more closely monitor

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the difference of plants growing in space versus on Earth.

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What have you discovered in that process?

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Matt: Well, we find that plants, for the most part,

grow similar in space as on Earth.

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A big variable is the water.

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There's a lack of convective

flow in space, and that makes water very

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sticky. Plants like a good mix of water

and oxygen in their root zone.

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And when we have water that doesn't mix well with

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oxygen, we get a lot of swinging back and forth between

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the roots being flooded and being in a state of drought.

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We have technologies that are working on that.

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To solve that problem of microgravity.

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Luckily, when we get to Mars and the moon,

those problems mostly go away.

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Kathleen: Got it. And so talk to me about this little space garden

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I keep hearing of - the VEGGIE Growth System. What is that?

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Yeah, the VEGGIE. We've got two of those on ISS,

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And it's a real simple system.

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It's about the size of a piece of carry-on luggage.

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It uses LED lighting and has six little plant pillows in there

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that are filled with growth medium, which is basically a soil substitute.

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And that's how we're able to grow and propagate the plants on the ISS.

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Kathleen: That's so interesting.

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The vision of a space garden just brings a lot of joy to me

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and I'm sure a lot of people.

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Anyway, so is there a plant that you're kind of the most excited

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about trying to grow in space?

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Matt: Definitely peppers.

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We actually just sent chili peppers to ISIS,

that will be grown in the summer,

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and we're excited about peppers

because they are very challenging.

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They take a long time to germinate.

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They take a long time to grow, about 120 days.

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And there's a real challenge with the flavor.

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If we were to overwater them, they taste

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like grass clippings. If we under water,

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and we stress out a lot, they're really spicy.

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So we're trying to really control to grow healthy plants

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and flavorful plants that the crew wants to eat and enjoy.

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Kathleen: Right. And you know what they say,

if you can't take the heat,

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get off the space station, right?

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Just kidding, that's my dad joke of the day!

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Well anyways, Matt I can't thank you enough for being here.

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[Bark] I learned a lot, and I hope you all did as well.

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And I can't wait to hear what you grow in space next!

Matt: Thank you.

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[Bark] Kathleen: Shut your little door, Buoy

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So now that we know more about crops

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aboard the space station, what about the crops

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we study from the space station that live down here on Earth?

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And for that, Christine Lee, Applications Lead for the ECOSTRESS

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mission is here to talk to us.

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Hey, Christine, thank you for being here.

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Christine: Hi. Thank you. Glad to be here.

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I was just talking with Matt about how the VEGGIE Lab on

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the ISS helps us better understand how plants grow in microgravity.

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And that's inspired all of the ingredients here for the salad.

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But I also know that instruments

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on the ISS help us better understand how plants grow down on Earth.

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I'm wondering how that is?

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Christine: Well, the instrument and projects that I work on, the Ecosystem Spaceborne

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Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station, also known as ECOSTRESS,

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collects thermal data from on board the International Space Station.

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And we use this thermal data

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to better understand vegetation water stress here on Earth.

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And so we can apply this data in understanding crop water stress,

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looking at drought across forests

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in climate-vulnerable areas all around the world.

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Kathleen: And so I know that we also look at the temperature of plants.

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And I can't say I know why we do that?

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Christine: We look at the temperature of plants because

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plants contain a lot of water.

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It's part of their process for photosynthesizing.

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And the temperature is directly

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related to the water content within those plants.

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And so the hotter a plant gets, we can use that as an indicator of how

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how healthy that particular plant is.

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Kathleen: Got it. OK, so all this data is captured and collected.

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Who then uses it?

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Christine: Well, we have a wide variety of partners.

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One of our key partners is the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

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They utilize the data to better understand crop water stress across

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different areas, primarily in the continental United States.

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And they use this to understand and inform decisions

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like irrigation and water management, as well as the onset of drought.

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Kathleen: And so what advantages does ECOSTRESS get being on the ISS?

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Christine: We love being on the International Space Station.

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One of the really unique aspects of being on the ISIS

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is that there's a variable overpass time.

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And what that means is that instead of taking measurements at the same time,

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during each overpass, the way we might with other polar

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orbiting satellite missions, is that we actually get to take a snapshot

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of temperatures and water stress at different times of day.

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And what this then translates to

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is being able to look at the peak of vegetation water stress,

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which typically occurs in the mid to late afternoon.

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This is something that has not been done before.

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And being able to create this daily cycle of water stress

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for vegetation at these spatial and temporal scales.

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Kathleen: Well, it seems to me that instruments onboard the ISS are pretty crucial

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when it comes to monitoring our human caused climate change.

[DOG BARK]

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Climate change is bad.

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Christine: Yes, so the really great thing about ECOSTRESS is that it

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complements these other instruments and other satellites like Landsat,

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to create a continuous long-term record of the Earth system.

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And right now, NASA is working on future missions that will build on these records

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to provide climate scientists a holistic view of the Earth.

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This provides us really unique insights to how vegetation

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and forests around the world are reacting to environmental and climate stressors.

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Kathleen: Well, you know, it's amazing to hear about all the science

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that goes into growing plants both in space and on Earth.

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And on that note, I'm ready to appreciate some of that science

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by digging into this salad. Christine, thank you so much for being here.

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I really appreciate it!

And thank you all for watching. Cheers!

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[DOG BARKING]

You want salad?