SPACE PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT EXPERIMENTS

ASTROCULTURE^TM

Objectives: The ASTROCULTURE^TM facility provides a controlled environment in which to grow plants in the near-weightlessness of space. Researchers will study which plants can be successfully grown without gravity and the changes that occur in different plants' structures and composition.

During the STS-95 mission, the ASTROCULTURE^TM facility is scheduled to conduct two experiments. One experiment, sponsored by International Flavors & Fragrances, Inc. in New York City, is partnering with NASA's Commercial Space Center, the Center for Space Automation and Robotics, to study how microgravity effects the production of plant oils important to many consumer products.

A second experiment is to determine if genes can be transferred from bacteria to a soybean seedling more effectively in microgravity. Soybeans are an important export crop that is valued at over $14 billion annually for the U.S. The gene to be transferred has possible medical applications which if successful would increase the value of the U.S. soybean crop.

Plants are expected to play an important role in future long-duration space flights. Through the ASTROCULTURE^TM experiments, researchers are learning how to provide astronaut crews with oxygen, food and pure water, and how to remove carbon dioxide from space habitats.

Description: The ASTROCULTURE^TM unit has flown on six previous Shuttle flights and a Shuttle/Mir mission. Each of the flight experiments has involved the addition of subsystems important for environmental control and plant growth. During these flights, lighting, temperature, humidity, nutrient composition, water supply, carbon dioxide and atmospheric contaminant controls were successfully tested.

On this mission, samples of the volatile oils of a flowering plant -- the substances that give some flowers their smell -- will be taken periodically and saved for analysis after return to Earth. The crew will monitor the plant during the mission and record its status on video for scientists conducting the experiment.

For the soybean seedling experiment, a crew member allow the seedlings to be exposed to bacteria containing the desirable gene. After return to Earth the seedlings will be grown to determine how many have incorporated the new gene.

NASA is pursuing the ASTROCULTURE^TM experiments for the possible development of astronaut life support systems based on large scale plant-growing facilities. However, the experiments are also yielding other benefits, in the form of new technologies for special uses here. For instance, high intensity light emitting diodes -- developed as plant lighting for the facility -- are being evaluated for a new cancer treatment that may save lives. This treatment technique, called Photodynamic Therapy, uses the tiny, densely packed light emitting diodes from the ASTROCULTURE^TM facility. These lights may be used to activate tumor-treating drugs which isolate and destroy cancer.

The ASTROCULTURE^TM flight experiment series is sponsored by the Space Product Development Office of the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.