This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Plants begin responding to spaceflight almost immediately after leaving Earth, according to a new University of Florida study that captured the earliest stages of biological adaptation during a commercial suborbital mission. Published in the journal npj Microgravity, the study reports the results of an experiment conducted by a UF astronaut during Blue Origin's New Shepard NS-26 flight on Aug. 29, 2024.
For more than two decades, UF space biologists Rob Ferl and Anna-Lisa Paul have worked together to understand how living organisms respond to spaceflight. For this study, they designed an experiment to capture biological changes during different phases of a mission. Scientists have long studied how plants and other organisms respond after spending days, weeks or months in space.
Much less has been known about the biological changes that occur during the first minutes of spaceflight and how those responses change as a mission unfolds. "The science to be done in suborbital space is real and worth the trip," Ferl said. "There is tremendous intrinsic value in the suborbital realm itself, including understanding rapid changes in biology during various phases of spaceflight, especially the first few minutes of being in space." For the mission, Ferl carried dozens of Arabidopsis plants in specially designed tubes attached to his flight suit that he activated at four different points during the trip to space and back: before launch, upon reaching microgravity, at the end of the weightless period as the vehicle began its descent and upon landing.
The tubes of plants were prepared before the flight by Paul and colleague Jordan B. Callaham, and then Paul delivered them to the Blue Origin capsule team before launch. At the Payload Processing Facility on the ground, Callaham tracked Ferl's progress and activated a corresponding set of control tubes at the same times, while Paul set out to meet the capsule and lead the landing operations in the field.
The coordinated operation allowed researchers to compare the plants exposed to spaceflight with identical plants that remained on Earth and to examine how the flight samples changed from one phase of the mission to the next. The devices, known as Kennedy Space Center Fixation Tubes, preserve biological material at the moment they are activated. The tubes, which the UF team helped design, have been used for hundreds of samples collected during space shuttle and International Space Station missions.
Using them aboard New Shepard allowed the UF researchers to apply a proven orbital research technology to suborbital spaceflight. Paul said the hours of training and preparation the team completed before the mission proved invaluable. Activations had to occur at exactly the right moments, both in flight and on the ground, to create meaningful comparisons between the spaceflight samples and their earthbound controls.
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