Page 212 - International Space Station Benefits for Humanity, 3rd edition.

Future crews on long-duration missions will need Since 2001, the award-winning Tomatosphere™
to be self-sufficient to stay safe and healthy. program has done just that. An estimated 3 million
Since carrying 2 to 3 years’ worth of food would students in Canada and the United States have helped
be expensive and impractical, astronauts will have researchers gather data to address these questions
to grow their own food en route to their destination. while learning about science, space exploration,
Space farming may sound futuristic, but in the closed agriculture and nutrition. Tomatosphere™ provides
environment of a spacecraft, plants could make a huge students with two sets of tomato seeds: one set that
contribution to life-support systems. Not only do plants has been exposed to space or space- simulated
provide food, water and oxygen, they also recycle environments, and one that has not been exposed
carbon dioxide and waste. But how do you grow but serves as a control group for comparison.
plants effectively in the radiation-filled environment Without knowing which set is which, students
of space? Which plants are best suited for space grow the seedlings in their respective classrooms.
missions? What type of seeds would be able to They measure a variety of information about the
withstand the journey and still germinate? What if tomato plants, the germination numbers, growth
we could recruit the next generation of astronauts, patterns and vigor of the seeds. This methodology,
scientists and engineers to help solve the problem? known as a “blind study,” allows the mystery of the
project to be real science for the students. Each class

Chris Hadfield, Canadian astronaut and former commander of the ISS, poses with 600,000 tomato seeds for
the Tomatosphere™ project, which returned to Earth with Hadfield in May 2013 after orbiting Earth for 9 months
aboard the space station. The seeds will be grown by classrooms across Canada and the United States.
Image credit: Canadian Space Agency/NASA

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