On board the International Space Station, conditions are proving fine for gardening.   And fresh food is now on the menu, for the astronauts.

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Dwarf wheat, zinnias and lettuce are among the crops the crew have grown successfully.  And after SpaceX’s Dragon Cargo spacecraft arrived at the ISS on April 4, new technologies are now available, to facilitate the process of growing a garden in space.

Dr. Gioia Massa is a Project Scientist at NASA Kennedy Space Center.  Her specialties include Space Life Sciences, Controlled Environment Agriculture and Space Life Support.

And Dr. Massa served as NASA’s science team lead, in developing the first-ever fresh food production system for the International Space Station in 2014.  Named Veg-01, or “Veggie”, the technology ultimately allowed astronauts to first sample fresh lettuce in space in 2015, according to NASA’s mission-pages blog.

Today, Dr. Massa and her team continue to research and develop additional systems for growing and harvesting fresh food aboard the ISS.

Dr. Massa talked about the process of developing “Veggie”, some of the challenges of growing crops in space, and the new technologies NASA has been developing, which will expand agricultural capabilities both on the ISS and on earth, in the future.

On this edition of Over Coffee®, you will hear:

• How Dr. Massa first became interested in space agriculture;

• The experiences, working as team lead on “Veggie” which she enjoyed the most;

• How NASA teams determine the safety of fresh crops grown in space;

• What NASA scientists are currently doing, to establish space-crop safety standards;

• Some of the technologies and procedures that enable International Space Station astronauts to grow fresh crops;

• The goals of planned future new space agriculture technologies;

• What’s currently growing on board the ISS;

• How a new experiment will allow scientists to further explore different types of plants’ responses, to conditions in space;

• What NASA’s discoveries in space agriculture might mean, for growing crops on Earth for future populations;

• One of Dr. Massa’s favorite stories, about the astronauts’ interactions with fresh crops grown aboard the ISS;

• A future goal for NASA’s experiments with plant systems aboard the International Space Station.