A new experiment is underway on the ISS

Mar 9, 2010 09:48 GMT  ·  By

Scientists have been trying to find viable alternatives to fossil fuels for many years. They want to create biofuels from renewable resources that would eliminate our dependency on polluting gasoline and diesel. However, the main issue today is that producing these renewable substances is extremely expensive, because crops only yield small amounts of usable material, from which to derive the necessary chemicals. But experts have now moved their labs to low-Earth orbit (LEO), aboard the International Space Station (ISS), where experiments are bound to provide them with more insight into how to genetically-engineer crops towards producing higher amounts of natural oils.

This line of work is special because it conducts all of the work in microgravity. The conditions aboard the ISS are unique, as there are no other facilities that could possibly meet the same criteria. On Earth, such conditions can only be achieved for short periods of time, of up to 20-30 seconds, aboard airplanes and inside drop towers. This is nowhere near enough time to grow an actual crop, or to produce viable offspring from a plant seed. The laboratories aboard the ISS are especially equipped to handle this kind of tasks, and researchers are hopeful that they will be able to extract viable knowledge from these studies.

Their primary goal is to determine how to best modify the structure, growth and development rates of plants, so that they produce optimum results. Current investigations are being conducted on jatropha curcas, a plant that produces a type of oil that can be used to create a sustainable biofuel. “As the search for alternate energy sources has become a top priority, the results from this study could add value for commercialization of a new product. Our goal is to verify if microgravity will induce any significant changes in the cells that could affect plant growth and development back on Earth,” says University of Florida in Homestead expert Wagner Vendrame, who is the principal investigator of the experiment.

“Watching the space shuttle go up carrying a little piece of my work is an indescribable experience. Knowing that my experiment could contribute to creating a sustainable means for biofuel production on Earth, and therefore making this a better world adds special value to the work,” he says. The cells were taken to the ISS earlier this year, aboard space shuttle Endeavor. The mission also delivered the Cupola observations dome and the tranquility module to the orbital laboratory, ScienceDaily reports.