SPACE MYSTERY UNFOLDS
by David Loftus
[This piece first appeared in the Roseburg (Oregon)
News-Review on April 25, 1990.]
SUTHERLIN -- It's the time of year for planting, so fifth-graders at West Intermediate School are busily gardening.
Unlike their families at home, however, these students might just be growing KILLER TOMATOES FROM OUTER SPACE. Of course, that dim chance only heightens the interest.
Careful to hold it by its leaves, Levi Wagoner
delicately transplants a space tomato seedling
from a margarine container planter to a milk carton.
-- photo by Mike Anderson courtesy of
the Roseburg News-Review
Levi Wagoner points out that the plants have extra leaves that curl under. They also seem to be growing faster than normal. "We think they're going to be deformed or something," Levi says. "It's really weird," Jordan Knee agrees.
The seeds were sent to students all over the country by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration after spending nearly six years in orbit around the Earth. About 12.5 million tomato seeds went up in an 11-ton satellite in April 1984. They were supposed to be retrieved 10 months later, but because of the Challenger explosion and other delays, they were not picked up by shuttle astronauts until January of this year.
NASA asked student scientists from upper elementary grades through university level to grow the space-exposed seeds alongside regular earthbound tomato seeds and note the differences in germination time, growth rate, and bloom and fruit behavior. The program is entitled, appropriately enough, SEEDS (Space Exposed Experiment Developed for Students).
Levi and Jordan are in Virginia Christiansen's class. Students in classes taught by Ida Baird, Doralee Hayden, and Lori Solberg also received kits and are doing their gardening.
"We're all doing different things (to cultivate our plants), so that makes a difference," Solberg explains. "It doesn't seem that (NASA) cares about it, but I'm keeping a little journal and we'll report everything."
For instance, Solberg is a veteran gardener with three raised beds of her own at home: "I grow everything -- asparagus, artichokes, strawberries, grapes, tomatoes -- everything." So she applied her knowledge in class: Her students germinated their seeds in Redi-Earth, warmed them in trays containing heating coils that kept the beds at 70 degrees, and applied fertilizer.
The results, so far, have been mixed. Seeds in Solberg's class began germinating only three days after planting, while seeds in other classes took 10 days. There were no coils in Christiansen's trays. The only fancy maneuver her students tried was setting their planters (margarine containers and milk cartons) outside the window on sunny days.
Jordan says his class waters every other day; Solberg's students water once a week. In Solberg's class, just 73 percent of the space seeds and 63 percent of the earth seeds germinated, while every single one of the seeds in Christiansen's class sprouted plants.
"So Mother Nature did better," Christiansen observes, "but I haven't rubbed it in too hard."
Now the students are busy watering, measuring, and replanting. "A lot of them had never seen the whole process before," Christiansen says. "They see the flowers on sale at the supermarket, and this is all the work that has to go in before that. They say, 'This is a lot of work.' "
Not expecting every seed to germinate, her students originally planted three seeds in each carton. But every one came up, and the instruction booklet counseled the gardeners not to re-pot until each plant had at last two leaves showing.
Then came the touchy process of lifting each seedling out by its leaves -- "You can't touch the stems or the acids will go into it and kill it," Levi remarks -- and separating the tangled root systems before replanting.
Measuring the plants by centimeters and arriving at averages means a little mathematics too. "They'll do it," Solberg says. "I made forms for them."
This kind of hands-on science project is exciting for the students, Solberg observes, "plus not knowing what will happen. They like that idea."
The gardening experiment made national news two weeks ago when a memo written by a consultant to NASA's school programs leaked to the press with its comment that the seeds might produce poisonous fruit.
"There is a remote possibility that radiation-caused mutations could cause the plants to produce toxic fruit," according to the memo written by Nelson Ehrlich, associate director of the aerospace education services program at Oklahoma State University.
The seeds were exposed to cosmic rays in space, where radiation levels are higher than those on Earth. The news reports caused several schools to drop the experiment.
"That's pretty sad," Solberg says. "At this point they're not dangerous. Kids don't eat plants at this stage anyway, and I don't think they'll bear fruit until the kids get out of school. If there was any danger we would throw the seeds away too, 'cause the kids come first."
Although the teacher's guide has a section concerning radiation, a note declares: "The space-exposed seeds do not pose any health hazard."
Kenneth S. Pederson, an associate administrator at NASA, minimized the risk, saying: "I will be happy to eat the tomatoes. My daughter is a schoolteacher; her school is growing the tomatoes; our whole family is going to eat the tomatoes."
Solberg says that although it is not a SEEDS experiment, NASA would prefer that students save the seeds of this generation and grow a second one: "To be a true mutation you have to go on to the next generation. But now with the hint that something could be wrong with them, I don't know what will happen. That's an administration decision"
Christiansen's students are sure they will plant the next round of seeds.
"The space seeds have gone up really fast," Jordan says. "They're over the top (of the milk carton planters) and you can't even see the earth seeds yet."