NASA shows off first flower grown in space

Partnering with Freelancer.com, NASA is calling for submissions from the public in a new design competition that aims to add a robotic arm to Astrobee, a “free-flying robot” that will patrol the International Space Station.

NASA Expedition 46 Commander Scott Kelly this week shared photographs of a flower in bloom on the International Space Station. He posted photos of the flower on his Twitter account.

On January 18, the astronauts took the space flower out in the sun for the first time.

In late December, Kelly found that the plants “weren’t looking too good”, and told the ground team, “You know, I think if we’re going to Mars, and we were growing stuff, we would be responsible for deciding when the stuff needed water”.

While this is the first zinnia known to bloom in space, it’s not the first space flower.

The Veggie plant growth facility was installed on the ISS in early May of 2014, and the first crop – red romaine lettuce – was activated for growth.

According to the report, the launch of the robot is scheduled in 2017 and the Astrobee that builds upon MIT’s SPHERES project, the three free-flying robots that have lived on the station since 2006, will autonomously roam throughout the ISS cabin, using sensors to conduct inspections or cameras to film the astronauts at work.

The Russians hold claim to the first flower in space, aboard the Soviet Salyut space stations of the 1970s and 1980s.

“NASA wants freelancers to help them figure out multiple ways to approach creating a decomposed architecture of a complex system”, the release says. Kelly and Astronaut Kjell Lindgren snacked on the second crop of lettuce in July 2015; the first crop was sent back to Earth for analysis.