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Seed to seed growth of Arabidopsis thaliana on the International Space Station.  B Link¹, B Stankovic¹, T Theno², G French², W Zhou¹, ¹Wisconsin Center for Space Automation and Robotics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, ² Space Explorers Inc., De Pere, WI.

     Living in space is difficult and requires a carefully controlled environment to reduce the stresses of the microgravity environment.  This is true for plants just as it is for humans.  The Advanced Astroculture (ADVASC) flight hardware was designed to provide an ideal plant growth environment in microgravity.  It provides an isolated growth chamber with controlled temperature, humidity, soil moisture level, and CO₂ concentration.  Here we report on the first seed to seed growth of Arabidopsis thaliana on board the International Space Station.

     In the current experiment (in collaboration with Space Explores Inc.) dry seeds were positioned inside ADVASC prior to launch.  The unit was activated on May 10^th after it was installed on the ISS. ADVASC automatically watered the dry seed and began controlling the soil moisture level once it was powered on.  The plants were grown at 22^o C and 70% relative humidity under 18 h days 6 h nights.  Set points were changed remotely from the University of Wisconsin at the end of the plants life cycle to encourage seed maturation.  Some of this seed will be saved for a future mission so that plants can be started in space from space produced seed.  

     Preliminary data including video images, transpiration rates and CO₂ consumption indicates that ADVASC provides a good environment for growing plants in space. Furthermore, its versatility- allowing commanding from the ground without requiring crew time- makes it ideal for long-term space flight experiments.