News & Events

Professor Jenny Mortimer, a plant scientist from the Waite Institute, Nicola Sasanelli, CEO of Andy Thomas Space Foundation, and Imogen, our Challenge Liaison, visited the Year 7 classes Wednesday morning. 

Kovid, James, Liam and Kavisha had this to report about the visit:

"It was amazing and I learned so much. She provided her email address so we can ask questions about our project and find out more about plants and space. Professor Jenny became a botanist because of a TV show she watched and liked to look at the weird plants like the Welwitschia mirablis, the bristlecone pine which can grow for 2,000 years, Wolffia arrhiza, duckweed and the very smelly Corpse Plant, which has a giant flower that smells like rotting meat because it is fertilised by blow flies.

She showed us a photo of Zinnias in space taken by Commander Scott Kelly.  He took lots of photos in space and they looked really cool and liked growing plants in space which is a very challenging thing to do.

It is a challenge to grow plants in space, the plants will need light and there is no sunlight in space, so they use a mixture of LED lights, the main colours they use is blue and red, different colours of the light make the plants grow in different ways.

Another challenge is deciding what plants to grow in space.  We could grow many different plants in space but they need to be hardy and small.  So far the best plant to grow is The Red Robin tomato because it is healthy, short, fast growing and low waste.  Mrs O’Malley explained we will soon be joining the ‘Grow Beyond Earth’ program and we will be working with students around the world to help NASA chose which plants will be the best to grow in space.  We will grow plants in a ‘Veggie Unit’ like they use on the International Space Station and our data will go to NASA.

Professor Jenny is experimenting with duck weed in her lab and we were surprised that it could be used as a food.  It could be a good crop for space because you can eat the whole plant and it will double every 48hours.  One of her friends in another university is experimenting with growing duckweed in flavoured water and has created bacon flavoured duckweed!

Andy Thomas is the only person from Adelaide that has been to space. He studied mechanical engineering at the University of Adelaide, then went on to complete his PhD at the University of SA. Then he went to the USA to study and he became an Astronaut.

Sending someone to space requires a lot of background work and a team of thousands of people. There are many professions involved and it requires a team effort. Imogen, from the Andy Thomas Foundation showed us a list of jobs that are involved in the Space Industry and it included engineering, medical personnel, transport, marketing and scientists, as well as many more.

Our goal is to research space technology and use it to solve daily problems on Earth, and also look at plants and experiments in space. We are going to look at the '17 Sustainability Goals' by the UN and use our research to help improve life on Earth. For this project we will be working with a school in Mangaran, a remote island in Northern Sulawesi.  We are going to help them by developing a Hydroponic system made from recycled materials that they can use to grow crops in a small area, create a product to sell and lead to a better life.

As we are learning about how to grow plants in space and Mangaran, we learnt about how different light can affect different types of plants and that there should be no waste because 1kg to take up to space costs $25,000. A good plant would be duck weed because you can eat the whole thing and will double in 48 hours."

Sue O'Malley
Leader of Learning – Middle Years STEM