Tanks from retired shuttle Endeavour going to space station

The water storage system project doesn’t have a clear timeline yet, though, so the agency still doesn’t know if and when the tanks will make it to space.

Their bold red colour is caused by nitrogen – which composes a large amount of the Earth’s upper atmosphere – interacting with the electricity. Instead, water for the ISS gets ferried up by different resupply missions throughout the year. More than any other benefit, the ability to grow crops in space increases the hopes for prolonged deep space explorations, the long voyages NASA envisions on the horizon. It took 33 days of nurturing on the part of Scott Kelly and his team of astronauts before they could harvest and eat it. The station appeared in the northwest part of the sky and vanished in the same area.

Veg-01 was developed by Orbital Technologies Corp.in Madison Wisconsin and was delivered to the ISS by a SpaceX Dragon resupply mission in April 2014. The seeds were then attached to a wick so its root facing side was facing the soil.

Endeavor has been spending its retirement for the past four years in the California Science Center, on full display for visitors and, quite possibly, as it’s main attraction. A batch of plants grown on the ISS were brought back to Earth last October, where NASA performed a range of tests on them to ensure they were safe for human consumption.

Mark Blenner of Clemson University in Clemson, South Carolina is heading up the study, called Synthetic Biology for Recycling Human Waste into Food, Nutraceuticals, and Materials: Closing the Loop for Long-Term Space Travel.

Fresh, crisp, red romaine lettuce. And their answer was ‘teamwork, ‘ saying teamwork is one of the most important skills they need on the global Space Station, Duncan said, adding that the answer solidified the Challenger Center at Paducah’s practice of teaching teamwork skills to its students.