I'm Emma (she/her), and I am mad keen on the idea of growing plants in space, so that's mostly what I talk about - #plants and #space. I also like mission patches, space food and #gardening on Earth. I'm the producer & host of a podcast called Gardeners of the Galaxy.
I am a human and happy to chat, so if you’ve got a question about plants in space, please do ask!
| Space Botany Blog | https://spacebotany.uk/about/ |
| GotG Podcast | https://gardenersofthegalaxy.podbean.com |
| Patreon | https://www.patreon.com/gardenersofthegalaxy |
| Mission Report Newsletter | https://emmadoughty.substack.com/ |
I saw the whole of the Moon!
Luke Jerram's artwork "Museum of the Moon" is currently on display at Harwell Science Campus in Oxfordshire.
Measuring seven metres in diameter, the moon features 120dpi detailed NASA imagery of the lunar surface. At an approximate scale of 1:500,000, each centimetre of the internally lit spherical sculpture represents 5km of the moon’s surface.
This photo shows NASA astronaut Kate Rubins with the Plant Water Management (PWM) apparatus in March 2021. Image credit: NASA
The PWM experiments are exploring different ways to water plants in space, although you'll notice they don't involve real plants!
More on the website: https://spacebotany.uk/blog/kate-rubins-with-pwm/
A fun NASA photo from the astrobotany archives. This shows astronaut Don Pettit attempting to sprout seeds in ear plugs as part of an education experiment during ISS Expedition 6 (2002/2003).
More on the website: https://spacebotany.uk/blog/from-the-archives-don-pettits-ear-plug-planters/
There are quite a few images of NASA astronaut Megan McArthur with the space chiles she helped grow for the Plant Habitat-04 experiment. She looks really happy in this one!
This photo is from September 2021, when chiles were growing for the first time on the International Space Station, inside the Advanced Plant Habitat.
Image credit: NASA
More on the blog: https://spacebotany.uk/blog/megan-mcarthur-with-space-chiles/
I look at what's happening in the world, and feel like there's not much I can do.
But I can do this, so I am starting a series of posts on women in astrobotany. I'll add to it whenever I can.
This photo (credit: NASA), taken on 10 March 2017, shows Dr Anna-Lisa Paul of the Florida Space Plants Lab working on the Advanced Plant Experiment-4 (APEX-4) in the Telescience Support Center at NASA Glenn. More details on the website.
This advert appeared in The Times in 1969, but I can't find any reference to who paid for it. A coffee marketing board, do you think?
I was video calling with a scientist yesterday who works with catalysts, and he mentioned the theory that the iridium on Earth arrived from space in a meteorite - possibly the same one that wiped out the dinosaurs.
So I stood up to show him my new ESA sweatshirt - Dinosaurs Didn't Have a Space Agency!
🦕 ☄️ 🦖
😃
https://physicsworld.com/a/iridium-in-undersea-crater-confirms-asteroid-wiped-out-the-dinosaurs/
Apparently, it's #InternationalPodcastDay
So here's the artwork for the next Gardeners of the Galaxy espiode, which I will release later.
Went to a talk last night at ESA's ECSAT conference centre in Harwell. It's currently hosting an invite-only exhibition of Apollo-era artifacts, including a manual of contingency procedures that was heavily annotated during the Apollo 13 crisis.
There's more detail online:
https://www.thespacevault.org/
