What will humanity be eating in the future when it eventually starts trying to colonize other planets? If you saw the movie “The Martian” you might say potatoes. But there are other vegetables vying to be the official foods of outer space – specifically soybeans and rice. Indonesians are experts at growing both plants and making them into delicious foods like nasi lemak and tempe.
Now some Indonesian high school students are using that expertise to help make space soybeans and rice into viable food source for future astronauts.
This morning, NASA launched an Atlas 5 rocket into space from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The rocket was carrying the unmanned Cygnus OA-6 spacecraft filled with cargo bound for the International Space Station (ISS). Among OA-6’s cargo are two scientific experiment prepared by students from Indonesia.
The two experiments are contained in micro-labs that have been designed to observe the growth of yeast and rice under zero-gravity conditions.
The first experiment was prepared by a team of high school students from the Unggul Del di Laguboti school in North Sumatra and it was designed to study the growth of yeast in outer space, which needs to be observed before scientists can experiment with growing soybeans in space.
The second experiment was prepared by a joint team of students from several high schools in Jakarta, Bandung, and Jayapura to study the growth of rice in outer space.
We’re super proud that our high school students were chosen to design these very important experiments that could help determine what humanity eats in the future as it reaches for the stars. We’re also super excited by the possibility of one day eating SPACE TEMPE.
A representative of the Indonesian Space Research Group, JW Saputro, said that the micro-labs took about 6 months to create. Last January, the Indonesian made micro-labs survived NASA test flight stress testing earning them permission to head to the International Space Station (ISS) on the Cygnus cargo freighter.
The micro-labs designed by the high school students are equipped with digital cameras, sensors, and microcontrollers, all of which can be used to transmit data about the experiments from the ISS to Earth through the Internet.
“A few days from now, students in Jakarta, Bandung and Jayapura, as well as in Laguboti, will begin to observe and record the results of their experiments. The Indonesian high school students have also received an invitation to present the results of their research at the Annual Conference of the American Society for Gravitational and Space Research in Washington, DC on November 2016, ” Saputro said, as quoted by Vivanews.
We’re super proud that our high school students were chosen to design these very important experiments that could help determine what humanity eats in the future as it reaches for the stars. We’re also super excited by the possibility of one day eating SPACE TEMPE.
