Astro Crops

Your Mission: Follow the development of three plants for 12 weeks to explore germination and plant growth.

If astronauts are going to settle on the Moon, or explore further reaches of our Solar System, they will need air, food and water. To prepare for long duration missions, scientists are researching how to create a closed life support system could be used in space, including how plants could be
grown in such a system.

In this set of activities, teams will build an understanding of germination and plant growth by following the development of three unknown plants for 12 weeks. Students will use their observations to make a hypothesis about which species of plants they are growing and discuss whether these plants are suitable for growing on long duration space missions.

Skills

Science, Biology, Plants, Seeds, Germination

Learning Objectives:

Observe and describe how seeds grow into mature plants
Create scientific diagrams and use labels
Execute systematic observations and measurements
Interpret results and draw conclusions from the results
Be able to perform comparative and fair tests

Equipment

Printed student data logbook for each group
Ruler
3 pots
Soil or other growth medium
Plant nutrients
Basil, radish and tomato seeds

Time

30 minutes per week for 12 weeks

Resource available in:

English, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, Swedish

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