US: How do plants grow aboard the international space station?
Gravity is not the only difference between the Earth environment and the International Space Station environment. In the closed atmosphere of a spacecraft, volatile organic compounds can accumulate. VOCs need to be scrubbed from the air, or seed production will suffer. There are elevated radiation levels that can cause mutations and affect growth. An experiment on Mir that involved storing tomato seeds in space for six years found mutation rates up to 20 times higher in the space seeds than in the control seeds stored on the ground. And there are the spectral effects of using only electric lighting.
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