Researchers at the UW-Madison Department of Botany, led by professor Simon Gilroy, received more than 1,000 containers of frozen plants from space Thursday.
The plants had been growing in the International Space Station as part of an experiment by Gilroy and his team. His experiment examines plant growth in zero gravity, according to a university press release.
The experiments also explore the phenomenon that plants free of mechanical stress, such as wind or rain, are more susceptible to disease.
“One astronaut observed that plants get lazy in a weightless environment; they grow long and thin, and don't lay down strong material, just like people lose bone mass in space because it isn't needed for supporting weight,” Gilroy said in the release.
At the Kennedy Space Center in Florida Tuesday, Gilroy’s team observed seedlings that had sprouted in weightlessness. The frozen plants will now thaw, and half of them will still be used in Gilroy’s zero gravity experiment. The other half, after initial analysis, will release a mass of data to any researcher interested in further exploring it.
Gilroy said NASA is trying a new mode, called geneLAB, to share the data with fellow scientists.
“Traditionally, a research group will put an experiment in space, get the results and publish,” Gilroy said in the release. “They hope it will speed up major advances on these tiny samples that we can afford to place in space.”
The research has implications in the fight against plant disease, and NASA is researching the potential for plants to supply food and oxygen during space travel. Beyond the immediate implications, there is excitement for what future research may bring.
“There's tremendous potential for further analysis by other labs around the world,” Gilroy said in the release.
