NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Dwarf wheat plants successfully grown from seed aboard the International Space Station have boosted scientists' confidence that astronauts will be able to use plants to recycle air and waste water on long-duration missions, such as a trip to Mars.

That's because the wheat were able to clean air through photosynthesis and water through transpiration at the same rate as on Earth.

At left: Principal Investigator Gary Stutte shows dwarf wheat that has been grown to the seed phase.

The wheat experiment results are important because spacecraft have only so much space to carry food, water and air.

"When astronauts go into space, they’re basically on a camping trip. Supplies are taken up and garbage is brought back. For long-duration missions we will need to create a system that will replenish food, water and air through recycling," said Gary Stutte, principal investigator for NASA's Photosynthesis Experiment Systems Testing and Operations (PESTO) experiment.

Although many previous plant experiments on the Shuttle and Russian space station MIR have shed light on various aspects of plant behavior on orbit, the PESTO experiment was the first designed to show relatively long-term plant development and results replicated from multiple experiment trials.

Plant experiments aboard Shuttle are typically limited by the short time the Shuttle is on orbit. Not much of a higher plant's lifecycle can be seen during a Shuttle flight, which makes the Space Station a critical research platform for life scientists.

"The experiment validated 30 years of ground-based plant research. We have been cultivating and testing plants for long-duration space travel based on the assumption that they would recycle air and water in microgravity in the same way they do on Earth," said Stutte, who also serves as supervisor for the plant research group of Dynamac Corp., the life sciences contractor for Kennedy Space Center.

The experiment was taken to the Space Station via the Shuttle on mission STS-110 and remained on orbit 73 days. During the webcast for the STS-110 launch, Gary Stutte gave a presentation regarding the PESTO experiment. To view the streaming video presentation follow this link: http://vstream1.ksc.nasa.gov/ramgen/odv/ksc_direct/sts110/Segment-four-multi.rm.

The plants were grown in containers specially designed to compensate for the low-gravity environment. Built by Orbitec of Madison, Wisc., the Biomass Production System containers allowed the dwarf wheat to grow with controlled temperature, light, humidity, nutrients, water and air.

At right: Expedition 4 Flight Engineer Daniel Bursch in front of the control panel for the dwarf wheat experiment on the ISS.

"We now know plants can grow normally in space because of the technology of these containers. That’s an amazing breakthrough," said Terri Lomax, director of the Fundamental Space Biology Directorate at NASA Headquarters.

The Fundamental Space Biology Office at NASA's Ames Research System managed the project.

Scientists across the world continue to pour over the multiple wheat samples from the long-duration plant experiment. The samples are being analyzed on the cellular, molecular and genetic levels.

"What we have here is some very rare samples that will continue to feed our scientific knowledge about the nature of plants and the behavior of plants on orbit," Stutte said.

Next Stutte and his associates hope to fly a longer dwarf wheat study that will allow the wheat to get to the seed phase. They are interested to learn whether the wheat will produce the same amount of grain with the same nutritional value as on Earth.

If so, we will be another step closer to creating a home away from home in space.

NASA's John F. Kennedy Space Center