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Release: 01-169

First commercial plant growth experiment from Wisconsin team gets started on Space Station

The first commercial plant growth experiment on the International Space Station is sponsored by a NASA Commercial Space Center — the Wisconsin Center for Space Automation and Robotics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison — and by Space Explorers Inc., a commercial educational products company in Green Bay, Wis.

This week, the Space Station crew activated the ADVANCED ASTROCULTURE™ experiment and watered seeds to initiate growth of the Arabidopsis plants — members of the Brassica plant family that includes species such as cabbage and radishes. The ADVANCED ASTROCULTURE™ plant growth experiment was designed and built at the Wisconsin Center for Space Automation and Robotics, also known as WCSAR, and was launched into orbit April 19 by the Space Shuttle Endeavour on the STS-100 mission.

The ADVANCED ASTROCULTURE™ consists of two units, a plant growth chamber and a support system unit that provides temperature control and other features for the growth chamber.  Before launch, the support system unit was installed in Space Station EXPRESS Rack 1 at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Fla. The Wisconsin team planted seeds inside the growth chamber, and it was installed in the Shuttle middeck. Before Endeavour undocked to come home, the Space Station Expedition Two crew moved the EXPRESS Rack into the Space Station. Later, they transferred the growth unit from the Shuttle middeck to the Destiny laboratory module and placed it in the EXPRESS Rack.

“We are pleased to have Space Explorers as our partner on our first Space Station experiment,” said Dr. Weijia Zhou, the director of the Wisconsin Center for Space Automation and Robotics.  “This initial experiment will not only test the functionality and robustness of technologies used in the new plant growth experiment hardware, but it will also provide us with valuable data to help us develop future space-based experiments.”

The Wisconsin Center for Space Automation and Robotics is one of 11 NASA Commercial Space Centers managed by NASA’s Space Product Development Program at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. This center specializes in agriculture and biotechnology related research and business, and the ADVANCED ASTROCULTURE™  experiment hardware will allow companies to conduct long-term plant research on the Space Station for the first time. Starting with this experiment on Space Station Expedition Two, industry will be able to grow plants in space over an entire life cycle — from seeds to plants that produce more seeds.

The Space Station provides an ideal laboratory for growing plants and studying the influence of gravity on the plant growth through various developmental phases. This is particularly important for studying the way a plant’s traits, such as disease resistance and nutrition, are determined genetically.

While the ADVANCED ASTROCULTURE™ experiment is on the Station, scientists will monitor it from a new, remote Mission Operations Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. They will be able watch the plants grow via video sent to them daily from the Space Station, and they can talk to the crew and send commands to the experiment from their remote center through NASA’s Payload Operations Center at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.

The plant growth unit will remain on board the Station until the end of Expedition Two, at the end of July, when Space Shuttle Discovery will return the growth unit containing the plants to Earth for analysis by scientists. A second growth unit with another experiment will be delivered to the Space Station later during Expedition Four, Space Station Flight UF1.

The ASTROCULTURE™ plant growth chamber, a precursor to the ADVANCED ASTROCULTURE™, has flown on six Space Shuttle missions and on a long-duration Shuttle/Mir mission, growing plants such as wheat, mustard and potatoes.

Space Explorers Inc., the commercial partner for this Wisconsin Center for Space Automation and Robotics investigation, specializes in producing Internet-based, space education programs.  It created the “Orbital Laboratory” program — a Web-based educational program that allows students to conduct a ground-based experiment and compare those results to the experiment on the International Space Station. While doing the experiment, students will learn about the lifecycle and reproduction of plants and about genetics.

“Students can read a textbook describing the lifecycle of a plant, and think it is no big deal, “ said Eric Brunsell, one of the principal investigators for the project and director of education programs at Space Explorers Inc. “But when the students can watch a plant grow through different lifecycles and know a similar experiment is taking place on the Space Station, it adds a unique dimension of excitement to the experiment.”

Space Explorers Inc. has developed curriculum materials for the experiment and provided it to schools. Using the software program, students can compare data through an online student experiment database. After the plant experiment is finished on the Space Station, students can use actual data from the experiment to recreate the experiment in a virtual environment.

 The other two commercial experiments slated for Space Station Expedition Two are exploring the fast-growing field of biotechnology.  A Colorado experiment examines why antibiotic production by microbes is enhanced in microgravity. An Alabama experiment is crystallizing more than 1,000 biological solutions.

“Industry investment in space remains high,” said Mark Nall, manager of NASA’s Space Product Development Program at the Marshall Center. “We assist companies developing experiments and help them explore how space research can contribute to the growth of their businesses.”

Most of the NASA Commercial Space Centers are located on university campuses and work closely with other academic and government research institutions. The centers have agreements with almost 200 firms, including Bristol-Myers Squibb, ALCOA, Amgen, DuPont, Eli Lily and Company, Space Explorers Inc., Monsanto Company and Polaroid.

Industry funds and participates actively in the research, pays for a portion of launch costs, and brings resulting products or services to market. Because a company pays for the research, it has the opportunity to commercialize products that may be developed as a result of the research.

“This is just the beginning for us,” said Zhou. “We look forward to conducting a variety of future experiments with many different commercial partners.”

Commercial activity through centers, such as the Wisconsin Center for Space Automation and Robotics, has resulted in development of numerous new technologies, a dozen licensing agreements and more than 25 patents. 

The light source used to help grow plants in the ADVANCED ASTROCULTURE™ hardware has been adapted for use in a variety of medical treatments. Last year, this technology was inducted in the Space Foundation’s Technology Hall of Fame. Since 1988, the Hall of Fame has honored innovators who adapt beneficial, commercial products from technology initially developed for the space program.

“People at the Commercial Space Center in Wisconsin believed in our idea when no one else did,” said Ronald Ignatius, president of Quantum Devices Inc. — a company that makes light emitting diodes in Barneveld, Wis.

Quantum Devices made light emitting diodes for plant growth hardware flown on numerous Space Shuttle missions and developed similar light sources for the Space Station plant growth experiment hardware. The company has been collaborating with

NASA and the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee to study the benefits of using this light source to treat brain and skin cancer and heal wounds.

NASA has scheduled several more commercial experiments for upcoming Space Station expeditions. To learn more about these experiments and for a complete list of NASA’s Commercial Space Center Web sites, visit

http://www1.msfc.nasa.gov/NEWSROOM/background/facts/SPDinfo.ht