ESA greenhouse in space

It’s small, but it’s a greenhouse for space voyagers – and for you. Paolo Nespoli will take a special greenhouse with him to the International Space Station and he’s inviting young science enthusiasts to conduct an experiment with him.

Growing plants in space will be crucial for the astronauts of the future. When flying to Mars or even further, it will be necessary to produce fresh food onboard and become partially self-sufficient.

Setting up greenhouses on the Moon, Mars or other planetary bodies will also be an important part of future exploration missions.

Greenhouses also provide oxygen and bring some life to the bleakness of space. Caring for plants is a good way to maintain memories of Earth and an enjoyable way to pass time during the long and possibly boring interplanetary cruise.


ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli during the STS-120 mission. Nespoli holds a scale model of Node 2, also known as Harmony.

The Italian-built Node 2 module was added to the International Space Station during the mission's second spacewalk.

Don't go Hungry, Eat Your Cotton Socks!

It's as true in today's world as it was in the antebellum South: cotton is king.

The plant has been cultivated for its fiber for over 7,000 years, and today it's grown by more than 20 million farmers in some 80 countries.

But while cotton accounts for nearly 40% of the fiber used worldwide to make clothing, there's one thing the plant has never been able to do well: feed people.

Cottonseeds are a rich source of protein--the current cotton crop produces enough seeds to meet the daily requirements of half a billion people a year. But the seeds can be consumed only after an extensive refining process removes the gossypol, a toxic chemical that helps protect the plant from insect and microbe infestation.

"People, pigs, chickens--none of us can stomach gossypol," says Kater Hake, vice president of agricultural research for the industry group Cotton Inc. Only cows and other ruminants can handle it.

Remove the gossypol, however, and you'd have a cheap and abundant form of protein for everyone. But get rid of all the gossypol, as plant breeders did in the 1950s, and insects will devour the defenseless cotton. Enter Keerti Rathore, a professor at Texas A&M University, who found a way around the problem through genetic engineering.

In new field-trial data, Rathore's team demonstrated that it can turn off the genes that stimulate the production of gossypol in the cottonseeds while the rest of the plant keeps its natural defenses. "This research potentially opens the door to utilizing safely the more than 40 million tons of cottonseed produced annually as a large, valuable protein source," says Norman Borlaug, an American agronomist who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for developing high-yield wheat varieties that have helped increase the world's food supply.

Rathore used a new technique, called RNA interference, to construct a genetic sequence that blocked the gossypol-producing enzyme in the seeds only. After succeeding in the lab, he began a test in a greenhouse to see if the genetically modified cotton plant would survive and pass on its new trait.

Rathore's just-compiled data show that the modified cotton appears to be normal in every way other than the fact that it has instantly edible seeds. "What works in the greenhouse should hold true in the fields," he says. By the way he also says "It takes like chick peas!"