Flower blooms in space

“First ever flower grown in space makes its debut”, captioned Kelly, who is referred to as NASA’s autonomous gardener aboard the space station, with hashtags #SpaceFlower #zinnia and #YearInSpace.

Scott Kelly has been on the International Space Station for 300 days now, and is nearing the end of an nearly year-long mission.

According to The Verge, the flower may not actually be the first to bloom in space. His newly-bloomed zinnias aren’t the first flowers grown in space.

We think it’s all pretty supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

The project titled “The Zinnia Care Guide for the On-Orbit Gardener” was created to help scientists study how plants react to being grown outside Earth, in preparation for the astronauts’ journey to Mars.

“I wanted to do a little demonstration of these paddles, they’re called hydrophobic paddles and they repel water like a rain coat”, Kelly said in a 4K video posted online. If it is smaller, it can be hit with more force, but Kelly has to be careful with his big droplet. The first growth cycle faced some issues, but the crew was able to harvest and eat lettuce from the second crop in August, 2015.

It’s truly impressive to see the space station in 4K and gain a better understanding of what it means to be living up there, and NASA’s interest in filming more activities for us down here on Earth has been welcomed by all.

In the meantime, astronauts on ISS have managed to have plenty of fun along the way.