The exploration of space is both exciting and challenging. The possibilities of not only visiting other planets but also colonizing them, is perhaps the most daring challenge ever undertaken by the human race.
Human exploration of space has the potential to enrich our knowledge, and provide us with resources to enrich the lives of every person on planet Earth.
Several things will be required in order to accomplish this amazing feat. It will begin with small steps. We have already reached the Moon, and the next steps will involve actually inhabiting the Moon, growing plants there and then proceeding to land humans on the planet Mars. We have already landed robots on Mars and Canadians have had a major role to play in this venture.
The big difference between travelling to the Moon and travelling to Mars is the distance, and hence the duration of the mission.
The technical difficulties associated with travelling to Mars will not be the biggest challenge. The ability to provide sufficient food and air for the inhabitants of the space vehicle will be among the major challenges! It is the area of human survival in space that is least understood. Human survival in space is an extremely broad field of research to which your class can contribute in an important way ... here's how. A typical mission to Mars would require enough materials and food to last the crew between two and three years. Although food can be dehydrated and reconstituted with water, some of the physical needs of the crew must be satisfied by growing crops, such as tomatoes.
Growing plants for food during the mission has the potential to satisfy important physical and physiological needs of the crew.
As anyone who has experienced a Canadian winter knows, long term confinement, isolation, restricted personal space, boredom, and the absolute predictability of everyday events is stressful. Studies have shown that growing plants and caring for other living things (e.g. pets) can reduce this psychological stress.
The care and nurture of living things alleviates boredom, provides an essential element of unpredictability or uncertainty in the outcome, provides a changing view of one's surroundings, and offers a sense of Nature in an otherwise mechanical environment.
For 2010, teachers will receive two packages of seeds for each class registered. The packages are labeled ”B” and “T”. The seeds have been identified with these initials as a tribute to the contributions made to the Canadian space program and to Tomatosphere by Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronaut, Dr. Robert (Bob) Thirsk.
One package of seeds is a control group and the other is the "treatment" group. The treatment group of Tomatosphere seeds was taken into space to the International Space Station (ISS) by CSA Astronaut, Julie Payette, on Mission STS-127, aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour from July 15th to 31st, 2009. During that mission, the astronaut crew delivered critical supplies to the Station, as well as experiments subsequently berthed to the laboratory platform. The Tomatosphere seeds were sent in four packages of 100 000 seeds each and spent approximately two months on the Station.
The seeds were returned to Earth in late September 2009 onboard a NASA shuttle flight and were then sent to Stokes Seeds in Welland, Ontario for packaging in order to be ready for distribution in the spring of 2010.
While in space, the seeds were occasionally checked on by Dr. Bob Thirsk.
Dr. Thirsk returned to Earth on a Russian Soyuz vehicle on December 1, 2009, after 189 days in space, 187 on the International Space Station.
The “treatment” to which the seeds were exposed included a number of elements during their two-month stay on the ISS. These were: 1) an increase in pressure on the Shuttle flight to the ISS, 2) the weightless environment while on board the ISS, 3) a slight increase in the amount of radiation which all living things experience outside of the Earth’s protective atmosphere and 4) on return to the Earth’s atmosphere, the seeds were again exposed to increased pressure.
Some variations of this treatment of Tomatosphere seeds have been used in past experiments but the rare opportunity to replicate exposure to ISS conditions could not be missed. This experiment will provide scientifically useful information by helping us to verify the results of the only other experiment on board the ISS in 2006.
The key question that you will be investigating with the Tomatosphere experiment is:
Will seeds that have been exposed to the environmental conditions on board the International Space Stateion germinate at the same, higher or lower rates than seeds which have not been exposed to these conditions (the "control" group)?
As a class, you might consider the following questions about a Mission to Mars:
Your class can provide scientists and mission planners with critical information by performing this scientific investigation.
During the Tomatosphere experiment you will be asked to germinate seeds from two sources, and to report your results online at the end of the experiment (click here to submit your results online). This experiment is conducted using seeds labeled "M" and "N". When you send in your results to the tomatosphere website, you will be informed about the origin of the two types of seeds.
You will receive approximately 30 seeds in each envelope. So, for every class registered, you will receive 60 seeds.
