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No NASA, These Are Not The First Plants To Flower In Space

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
January 16, 2016
Filed under , ,

Keith’s note: Beautiful pictures of flowers in space have been posted by Scott Kelly on Twitter – and they’re very popular. Alas, NASA does not post these high resolution images online. There’s no mention at Scott Kelly’s flickr, JSC’s Flickr, etc. But more importantly this “First ever flower grown in space” claim is totally bogus – just ask Google. It has been done more than once – and many years ago. Score another failed tagline for PAO’s fact checking folks.
First species of plant to flower in space, Guinness
“In 1982, the then Soviet Union’s Salyut-7 space station crew grew some Arabidopsis on board. During their 40-day lifecycle, they became the first plants to flower and produce seeds in the zero gravity of space.”
Plant growth, development and embryogenesis during Salyut-7 flight, Adv Space Res. 1984;4(10):55-63.
“The seeds sown during the flight germinated, performed growth processes, formed vegetative and generative organs and, judging by the final result, they succeeded in fecundation, embryogenesis and ripening.”
Modification of reproductive development in Arabidopsis thaliana under spaceflight conditions, Planta, April 1996, Volume 198, Issue 4, pp 588-594
“Reproductive development in Arabidopsis thaliana (L.) Heynh. cv. Columbia plants was investigated under spaceflight conditions on shuttle mission STS-51. Plants launched just prior to initiation of the reproductive phase developed flowers and siliques during the 10-d flight.”
June 17-26 – Diary of a Space Zucchini, Don Pettit (2012)
“Sunflower is going to seed! His blossom is wilted-brown and has a few lopsided packed seeds. This is not quite normal, but then, we are living on the frontier and things are different here. They are not ready now; I wonder if they will be by the time Gardener is with his seed pod?”
NASA astronauts just made flowers bloom in space – but they’re not actually the first, Washington Post
“And according to the website NASA Watch, cosmonauts produced flowers several times in the pre-ISS days of spaceflight. It seems that in at least one case, the entire growth process occurred during flight. That was a lettuce plant, but lettuce plants can flower – and according to research published on the subject, it appears the Russian lettuce did.”

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

16 responses to “No NASA, These Are Not The First Plants To Flower In Space”

  1. Brian_M2525 says:
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    It seems like a common theme; NASA PAO seems to have little knowledge of what they’ve (or anyone else) done in space in the past. They used to have in-house experts who prided themselves on this knowledge. Maybe its the millenials taking over; they seem to try and hyperbolize everything presumably because they figure that is the only way they will ever get any press. Used to be NASA created useful fact sheets, storylines, things that built knowledge among their own inside the program as well as out in the public and the schools; it lent some continuity. Social media, both its preparation and reading it, is one way to get the news out but there is little continuity or deep learning taking place. Everyday is more news. Everyday is deja vu all over again.

    • kcowing says:
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      I did not even need to do any research when I first saw this since I worked at NASA’s life science division in the late 1980s/early 1990s plants flowering in space was common knowledge. There are many, many people within easy reach of NASA PAO who know things like this. And then there’s Uncle Google to ask.

  2. Bob Mahoney says:
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    I’m afraid that it isn’t only PAO. The flight activities people who scheduled crew activities for ISS Expedition 1 apparently hadn’t read up on the history of Skylab and that program’s 3rd-crew mutiny. They had the iss crew’s schedule packed like a shuttle mission’s one-to- two-week jaunt. Doesn’t work with long-time fligh, as ex-1’s Navy Seal CDR had to explain to them none too bluntly.

    • fcrary says:
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      The Skylab third crew didn’t really mutiny. That story got exaggerated in the telling. At most, it was a strike, and it could be called the on-site commander using his best judgement and rejecting higher orders from distant people who didn’t understand the local situation. But you are entirely correct about the problem (a schedule which would be sustainable for few-day missions but wasn’t viable for weeks on end.)

      • Bob Mahoney says:
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        I do not disagree with your clarification; strike is a better word than mutiny. I am constrained where I am to using a hospital-provided tablet system and I do not do tablets well which messes with my writer’s mind (as does some of the medication…).

  3. fcrary says:
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    I agree about claiming a “first” when it really isn’t and the people involved ought to know better. I’ll also note that the journal, Nature, will not publish papers claiming to be the first to do something; they don’t want to get mixed up in claims and counter-claims.

    But you wrote that the pictures and the comment about being first were things Kelly put out on his Twitter account, and that NASA PAO didn’t pick it up. Doesn’t that mean Kelly was the one who goofed? (Not that PAO people haven’t made similar mistakes.)

  4. kcowing says:
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    Kelly is a NASA civil servant performing the tasks he is paid to do. Other NASA employees are supposed to work with PAO on official job related issues – but Kelly is an astronaut, so who cares, right?

    • fcrary says:
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      I’d certainly want the same rules to apply to everyone. I’d just prefer everyone being able to make personal comments using a personal account (and taking personal blame for mistakes) while also having an official account for official statements.

      But we’ve discussed this before. Can I predict you will say that isn’t how it works? And that I’ll reply that I know, and I’m describing how I think it should work.

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      Doesn’t every NASA employee spend free time as he might wish? I wonder if astronauts on orbit are regarded in a different manner.

  5. Brian_M2525 says:
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    Its an interesting question. If so much information is going out through the individual astronaut’s social media while they are up there, does NASA provide the astronauts with social media assistance? I’d think that if its personal, non-duty kinds of functions and activities, like Hadfield’s singing-obviously not a NASA (or CSA) function, then maybe they ought to work on their own. But if its tied to their official duties, like observations of plant growth experiments, they certainly ought to be getting help.

  6. NX_0 says:
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    It is obvious that this Increment includes a new and improved version of this device:
    http://www.theonion.com/art

  7. ThomasLMatula says:
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    It looks like TASS is claiming its the first flower too, missing a legitimate opportunity to proclaim their cosmonauts did it first. Amazing…

    http://tass.ru/en/science/8

  8. Brian_M2525 says:
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    Now that the work week has started, social media has kicked in and this story is all over, along with a bigger story picked up on NPR that Kelly’s superb gardening skills saved the plants from mold and allowed them to be the first to ever flower in space.
    If only it were all true.
    Unfortunately the more these kinds of false stories come out of NASA (“we are on the way to Mars”, the last year, is another false story) the less credibility NASA has.

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      Well, given that perhaps 70% of all cultivated plant disease is fungus/mold related (at least that is the case here in the tropics), there’s no rocket science involved in improving the air circulation to improve transpiration and reduce any standing water on leaf tissue.