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The Space Tomato Project
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20717 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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| Issue
Date : |
9 / 1992 |
2,587 Words |
| Author
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Ken Selee
Ken Selee is a science teacher in the Turlock, California,
school district and an avid space buff. |
Space tomatoes have been sprouting everywhere. More than 3.3 million student scientists and 64,000 teachers in every state and in 34 foreign countries have grown tomatoes from seeds flown in space and compared them with earth-based tomatoes. The experimental program assisted NASA in its own long-term planning, but it also gave a tremendous boost to practical science in the classroom.
The project SEEDS (Space Exposed Experiment Developed for Students) unleashed a mass upswelling of teacher-student-community involvement in hands-on science. NASA's first attempt at a national science project was a success by any standard.
Why Use Tomato Seeds?
The tomato seeds had been flown in space as part of the Long Duration Exposure Facility (LDEF), a satellite designed to test the effects of long-term space flight on various materials. NASA scientists especially wanted to know what materials would be most durable in space, so engineers would have the most completed information when designing space station Freedom, destined to be occupied in 1999. Planners also wanted to know if the sun's rays would damage plant parts above earth's protective atmosphere.
Launched into earth orbit in April 1984, LDEF was to be brought back to earth after a year. But scheduling conflicts and then the Challenger tragedy pushed its rescue farther and farther back. The satellite was finally plucked from orbit by the shuttle Columbia in January 1990.
The selection of California Rutgers Supreme tomato seeds came about as the NASA project team was searching for a type of seed that would meet the following conditions: a seed that is commonly known throughout the land and one that is small enough to allow for a large number to be placed in the metal canisters aboard LDEF. The characteristics of this plant are: nonhybrid, open pollinated, and produces about the same fruit, generation after generation. This would make it easy to spot variations from the norm in the plant and the tomato as it matures.
The seeds were placed in Dacron bags in several layers and packed in a slight vacuum in aluminum containers. The tray was then mounted on the LDEF allowing for exposure of the containers to the environs of space.
A Universal
...
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