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Space shuttle Endeavour to deliver Miami botanist's experiment to international space station

01/29/2010

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Left to right: Katherine Millar, postdoctoral research associate; John Kiss, professor and chair of botany; and Prem Kumar, senior postdoctoral research associate, at the NASA laboratory in California, preparing for the Tropi-2 experiment.

When the scheduled Feb. 7 launch of the space shuttle Endeavour takes place, it will deliver the Tropi-2 payload containing the research led by Miami University botany professor John Kiss to the International Space Station (ISS).

The research, which focuses on understanding how light and gravity affect plant growth, means plants may be able to be used in regenerative life support on Mars or the moon, according to Kiss. Future astronauts could be able to grow plants as part of life support systems on long-term space missions, according to NASA.

After running two six-day experiments on the ISS, Tropi-2 will return to Earth in the space shuttle Discovery.
Tropi-2 is a semi-autonomous space-based experiment to study Arabidopsis thaliana (the thale cress) seedling sprouts to observe their response to light and gravity at a cellular level.

“Specifically, the seeds will be grown in various levels of gravity including microgravity — or the weightlessness experienced on the ISS — as well as gravity levels on the moon and Mars,” Kiss said.

Tropi-2 is a continuation of the Tropi-1 experiment, also led by Kiss, performed on the ISS in 2006 – the first experiment to be performed on the European Modular Cultivation System (EMCS) in collaboration with the European Space Agency. Once on board, Tropi experiments will be performed automatically inside the EMCS, requiring minimal involvement from ISS crew members. NASA astronauts Jeff Williams and T.J. Creamer will handle the Experiment Containers, prepared by Kiss and his team, from placement into the EMCS through transfer to a freezer on the Discovery.

Kiss has been awarded more than $1 million by NASA for Tropi. Richard Edelman, director of Miami’s electron microscopy facility, and Melanie Correll, assistant professor of agricultural and biological engineering at the University of Florida, are co-principal investigators of the project. In the past four years, Kiss’s research has involved eight undergraduate students, two graduate students and two post-doctoral scholars at Miami.

For more information about the Tropi-2 mission, go to http://spacebiosciences.arc.nasa.gov/STS130.html.

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Photo of shuttle launch.

STS-130-launch.mov