Forget life on Mars, here’s a flower on the space station

Zinnias have opened their pretty petals for the first time on the International Space Station, and NASA astronaut Scott Kelly couldn’t be prouder. The zinnias, grown as part of the Veggie program, have had a rough path: They battled excessive water, overdrying and even enterprising mold before beginning to recover in January. To better balance conditions for the zinnias, NASA named Kelly an autonomous gardener (or “commander” of Veggie) on Christmas Eve, so he could independently decide when the plants needed to be watered or tended to instead of waiting for directives from Earth.

Yes, there are other life forms in space!

Scott Kelly tweets his picture

“The zinnia plant is very different from lettuce,” Trent Smith, Veggie project manager, said in a statement. “It is more sensitive to environmental parameters and light characteristics. It has a longer growth duration between 60 and 80 days. Thus, it is a more difficult plant to grow, and allowing it to flower, along with the longer growth duration, makes it a good precursor to a tomato plant." Many plants have been grown in space — including sunflowers, in 2012 — but the Veggie program aims to learn about how to grow a complicated plant through its entire life cycle and overcome the hurdles on the way.

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