Space Chile Grow a Pepper Plant Challenge

May 05, 2020

Space Chile Grow a Pepper Plant Challenge

Update on 11/26/2021:

Today was the final harvest!

Espanola Improved Peppers have been growing on the Space Station since August, and today astronauts are harvesting their last peppers. This was the longest plant grow-out on the ISS!

Here's a fun video taken after the previous harvest.

images-assets.nasa.gov/video/PH-04_Pepper_Fun/PH-04_Pepper_Fun~orig.mp4

Here's a photo of the astronauts posing with their peppers during the previous harvest.

Here's a photo of Mark Vande Hai preparing to photograph the peppers on October 20, 2021. In 2017 Mark assisted Joe Acaba with installing the Advanced Plant Habitat. It was exciting that he then got to harvest the peppers that grew in that hardware in 2021!

And I heard he harvested again today!

Here's a photo of the screen in the Experiment Monitoring Area in the Space Station Processing Facility at Kennedy Space Center - it's from the harvest today!

Here's a photo of the current ISS crew. It's Expedition 66.

Their patch even looks like Route 66!

Here's what Route 66's sign looks like.

Route 66 travels through the American Southwest. It goes right through New Mexico!

Update on 6/3/2021: It's Launch Day! NASA SpaceX Commercial Resupply Mission-22 is loaded up and on the launch pad here at Kennedy Space Center. Even for Experiment PH-04! Pepper seeds will soon be on their way to the International Space Station. Learn About the Research going up on this launch here They're launching today and in July the astronauts will start growing them in the Advanced Plant Habitat (APH) hardware on the ISS! Here's a photo of JAXA Astronaut Soichi Noguchi with the APH.

We are participating in the challenge Jacob Torres started - to grow pepper plants indoors!

Here are our plants. I took this photo on the morning of Tuesday, May 5, 2020. One plant is all by its self. The other pot contains a bunch of plants. Most commercial farms plant their pepper plants alone. At the Martinez family farm in the high desert of New Mexico, they grow theirs in bunches. We wanted to see just how different they grew in these two ways. My 4 year old loves the look of peppers growing in bunches. Notice how short the plants are when they grow in a bunch? I think they're probably better adapted to buffeting winds and harsh temperature extremes in these bunches. Like a little forest, they have a canopy all of their own, which means they have different air flow and lighting dynamics than plants growing alone.

We planted these on March 14, 2020. I may have shared this picture before. We planted them in pots with Miracle Grow potting mix.

By March 20, they looked like this. They germinated. We had liftoff!

We have ours growing under an Aerogarden light, on the pepper setting. We keep track of the temperature and humidity in that space, it is usually around 74°F and 50% humidity.

I made these educational lessons to do with my family for the challenge.