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a big part of the mission of the

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International Space Station is to get

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humankind ready for future missions out

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into the solar system when those future

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astronauts set off they may want to take

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some of the comforts of home along with

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them perhaps their own plants but less

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oh for the ambience then maybe as a

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source of food for more on this story go

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this morning to my colleague bill

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hubscher at the Marshall Space Flight

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Center in Huntsville Alabama thanks Pat

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it is pretty much accepted in the

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scientific community that the physiology

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of plants and animals will change during

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long-duration flights in orbit but what

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about genetic changes we caught up with

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Amara Pereira investigating the plant

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DNA to see and learn more about why this

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is such an important field of study what

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I'm really interested in is how plants

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sense and respond to the environment and

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so in particular to the microgravity

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environment and so our first experiment

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was to look at a molecular level what

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are the changes that occur in plants

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when they grow under microgravity

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so our first experiment was called

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efficient with the Ames Research Center

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since it was our first experiment we had

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a little bit of a learning curve but not

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too much and the plant experiments are

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fairly easy to set up because we can

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send the seed dry mounted and they don't

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grow till it actually gets into the

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hardware in the MCS and get started by

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hydration so there is some period of

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time where the plants will the seeds

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will be not and so there's a little bit

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of time in terms of handover and

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before the experiment needs to start so

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we set up everything in the hardware at

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NASA Ames we took all our seat over

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there and use their hardware and set it

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up and the plants went up on the very

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last space shuttle

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sts-135 which is very special and we got

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to see that we got passes to see they'll

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take off and then the experiment was

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carried out so this was July 2011 and

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then on-orbit on the ISS we had two

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experimental runs back-to-back that was

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done in August of 2011 everything went

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pretty well we had excellent germination

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we would get imagers downlinked every

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six hours almost in real time so we knew

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exactly how well the experiment worked

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as far as the plants growing and

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everything and then at the end of the

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experiment the astronaut collected the

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samples and put them in the freezer so a

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new investigation is called plant RNA

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regulation we will use the same hardware

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as before we will have some

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modifications to the experimental setup

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just to refine it a little bit more and

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to make it more physiologically relevant

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to how plants grow or noth for example

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we will actually include time points

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there will be a temporal component to

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the experiment because the first

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experiment was just harvested after five

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days but because we saw some interesting

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changes in the development of the plant

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roots in microgravity completed one 1g

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we proposed to have two time points so

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we can dissect that difference a little

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bit better why is the station such an

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important platform for you in your

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investigation in particular well I think

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it's mainly because we cannot replicate

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those conditions on earth I mean we have

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different simulations but they're not

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quite the same thing

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and in order to understand how plants

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respond to microgravity this is one of

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the particularly long-term microgravity

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so we could use different kinds of

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platforms if we just wanted to look at

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what happens instantly or within a few

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minutes but if we want to see how do

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plants adapt to this environment and

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grow over a period of time then we need

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to have sustained microgravity so I

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think the space station is our best

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option clearly in terms of space and

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long-duration missions it's important to

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understand and be able to grow plants in

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space but the space environment has

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various adverse or unfavorable

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unfamiliar conditions compared to our

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plants encounter on earth so we think it

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is a good it can give us important

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information as to how plants can deal

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with other adverse situations here on

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earth I mean we know the climate is

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changing we know we need to grow more

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plants and more unfavorable habitats so

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all of all of these things can be useful

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we can get useful information towards

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answering some of those questions doing

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space research has been really exciting

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and one of the nicest things about it is

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how excited the students get so as an

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educator it it inspires so much interest

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and enthusiasm and so we've had a lot of

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students who've been wanted to come and

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work in the lab and be exposed to this

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research

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a quick look now inside the payload

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operations integration Center Mission

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Control for science on the International

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Space Station where NASA flight

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controllers are on-site 24 hours a day

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seven days a week

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to guide and manage scientific

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discoveries in orbit and that'll do it