Space travel is a million miles from day-to-day life; a million miles away from everything in fact. We live and breathe flowers, sending flowers up and down countries all over the world making people smile. We once joked about flower deliveries to the Moon, but with every day that passes this is looking like it could be more and more possible.
First ever flower grown in space makes its debut! #SpaceFlower #zinnia #YearInSpace pic.twitter.com/2uGYvwtLKr
— Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly) January 16, 2016
This is truly a historic moment in the development of space travel, science - and flowers. For hundreds of years flowers have been symbols of love, devotion, pride, every possible emotion under the sun, and now for the first time, flowers have been grown in an environment we know very little about.
The Zinnia is a flower in the sunflower genus, easily recognised by the long stem and bright, vibrant colour. Most importantly, these flowers are native to the dry shrubland stretching from Southwestern United States to Southern America, thriving most spectacularly in Mexico. Perhaps this native environment has been fundamental to the success of NASA's 'Veggie' experiement.
This isn't the first expirement to grow something in space however, courgettes, lettuce and broccoli sprouts have all been grown in this environment, some of the produce was even eaten by the astronauts on board at the time. Even of flowers, the zinnia is not the first to have been attempted, astronaut Don Pettit once attempted to grow sunflowers aboard the ISS (international space station). The sunflowers grew, but they didn't resemble sunflowers as we knew them necessarily.
Every day huge advancements are made in the exploration of space and our understanding of the universe and the world we live in and it is easy to get lost in the vastness. We love news like this, but we also love remembering the little things and making the most of the moments we live in. If you live with your head in the clouds, don't forget to make those around you feel happy, noticed and remembered.
