T O P I C R E V I E W |
Fezman92 | Every once in a while I see seeds that have are claimed to have flown on the ISS. Is there any truth to those? |
garymilgrom | I know of two types of seeds flown in space - Tomato seeds on the LDEF and Cinammon Basil seeds on STS-118. I don't know if any of these spent any time on the ISS. The seeds are generally distributed to children along with control seeds that have not left Earth. The kids can grow both control and space flown plants to see the differences caused by exposure to space (if any). Both types of seed packs appear regularly on eBay. |
Robert Pearlman | There is also Tomatosphere, an educational outreach project by the Canadian Space Agency and others. At least a couple of their annual seeds campaigns have included samples flown on the space station. |
mikej | The Alabama Aerospace Teachers' Association arranged to have some apple seeds flown aboard Endeavour to Mir. I own one of these seeds. A tree grown from one of these seeds is planted near the US Space & Rocket Center. |
cosmos-walter | Sunflowers grown from seeds which were flown in space usually get bigger than unflown from the same flower. However, they are more damageable. I am aware of cosmonauts taking such seeds into ISS for a school or for other children. |
MarylandSpace | Weren't mustard seeds and/or poppy seeds flown sometime during manned space flights? Does someone remember? |
Robert Pearlman | Ed White flew mustard seeds on Gemini 4. His son later sold prints (titled "The Ten Million Dollar View") that had one seed attached to each. The prints were a limited edition of 1,500. |
spaceman | A bag of 250,000 pansy seeds was placed in the Kvant-2 EVA airlock of the MIR space station during Helen Sharman's flight way back in 1991. Seeing a video interview with her reminded me. They were distributed to schools in the U.K. I never managed to obtain any however. There was probably an accompanying lesson plan/pack too. |
Rick Mulheirn | I have some of the Helen Sharman flown seeds; a packet of flown and a packet of control seeds. From memory they came with a single piece of card outlining the project and prospective classroom uses; nothing elaborate. |