Passage Excerpt from “Growing Peppers on the ISS Is Just the Start of Space Farming”
Excerpt from “Growing Peppers on the ISS Is Just the Start of Space Farming”
by Melanie Canales
The author, Melanie Canales, is a first-generation Peruvian American farmer and beekeeper based in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, on lands of the indigenous Monacan and Manahoac tribes. Her work focuses on creating healthy relationships between people and their surrounding ecosystems.
Unburdened by the constraints of gravity, red and green peppers jut out at 45-degree angles inside the Advanced Plant Habitat (APH), a sort of space terrarium not much larger than a microwave. Four chile pepper plants stand effortlessly upright, despite the dozens of glossy fruits weighing them down. These plants have lived entirely in space; their leaves have never been chewed on by insects or rustled by a summer breeze, [and] their stems are unfamiliar with bending toward the sun’s arc across the sky. Scissors glint under the tank’s white and blue lights as astronaut Mark Vande Hei and his team snip the stems of those that are ready for harvest. The peppers whirl around their heads until the astronauts catch them and tape them against a board to photograph.
Back on Earth, the Plant Habitat-04 team of engineers and plant scientists are observing and conferring with the astronauts. Of the 26 peppers in this batch, only the 14 finest will stay on the International Space Station [ISS] for consumption. The rest will be wrapped in foil, sealed in a Ziploc bag, then frozen at a brisk −80 degrees, until they can come roaring back to Earth in the next cargo capsule to be studied later. Now, after a 137-day growth cycle, the astronauts remove the plants from the module and trash them. Project Plant Habitat-04 is complete. It’s taco night on the ISS.
Since 2014, NASA1 has experimented with growing lettuces, brassicas,2 and zinnias3 in space, an endeavor that relies on highly specialized technology over 50 years in the making. [Fall 2021’s] two successful pepper harvests . . . will provide data on the nutritional and psychological benefits of growing vegetables on-craft, as well as a crop’s ability to reliably produce long-term in microgravity. While controlled environmental agriculture is not new, the APH experiment represents an evolution in specialized growth habitats. It doesn’t aim to re-create Earth’s conditions, but to perfect each isolated variable of plant growth in the clinical environment of a spaceship.
“The Advanced Plant Habitat is the most complex plant growth system on orbit today,” says Lashelle Spencer, a plant scientist at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Its more than 180 sensors control and monitor temperature, humidity, and carbon dioxide. The astronauts can adjust the color and intensity of the light, and how much moisture the plants’ roots are getting. It waters itself.
It’s the day after Thanksgiving, and Spencer has been at Kennedy since 5 a.m. to facilitate the peppers’ final harvest. As part of the project team, she played a crucial role in preparing the seeds that were sent hurtling into space in June and guiding the astronauts through maintaining the plants in orbit. . . . Though astronauts can spend upwards of 100 days in space, their on-mission meals come dehydrated and pre-packaged; their vitamins and minerals are isolated in supplements, which lose nutritional value the longer they’re stored. Spencer’s goal is to create the conditions necessary for cultivating healthy plants in space, so those plants can sustain healthy astronauts on long-term missions. Astronaut food is great, she says—“especially the shrimp cocktail. But you’re missing that crunch. You’re missing that fresh pop of flavor, the green flavor that’s not there in that packaged food.”
The sensory experience of growing productive crops can also help mitigate4 the psychological effects of long-term space travel. . . . Spencer says the team cracked open the door of the APH every day to observe their vegetable companions with all the tenderness of home gardeners. When harvest day came, they batted their bounty around the ISS, taking selfies and delighting in watching the fruits pirouetting around the spacecraft. . . .
“We were thinking no heat, so that [the peppers] wouldn’t be dangerous, but maybe the astronauts need a little spice in their life,” says Paul Bosland, who along with his colleagues at the Chile Pepper Institute genetically engineered5 the NuMex Española Improved chile pepper seeds grown in Plant Habitat-04. . . .
Working with NASA, Bosland cultivated a variety that could accommodate both the nutritional needs of astronauts as well as the logistics of growing a plant in space. . . .
. . . The experiment is helping gather the data necessary to determine the nutritional content of crops grown in space, and therefore how many people they can feed, and for how long. Though much is still unknown, Spencer is certain of one thing that future astronauts will need to do: “I think in an optimal world, a scientist like me would say that they would be growing plants from day one. From the day they left to the day they came back, they would be growing them.”
From “Growing Peppers on the ISS Is Just the Start of Space Farming” by Melanie Canales from WIRED, December 21, 2021. Copyright © 2021 Condé Nast. All rights reserved.
1NASA: National Aeronautics and Space Administration
2brassicas: a large genus of herbs, such as broccoli and cabbage
3zinnias: a genus of herbs and low shrubs that have flowers at their heads
4mitigate: to make something less severe or harmful
5genetically engineered: combined parts of DNA from different plants to produce a new plant
Question
What is the relationship between the scientists and the astronauts in carrying out the plant-growing experiments?
Move the correct answer to each box.
Scientists on earth are primarily responsible for for conducting plant experiments in space, while the astronauts aboard the International Space Station are responsible for for the experiment.
On the test you drag tiles into the boxes; here, choose each box’s tile from its menu. Each tile can be used once. The DOE has not published how answers with several parts are scored; this site counts one right only when every part is right.
Show the answer
Correct answer: blank 1: developing the materials and systems; blank 2: growing the plants to harvest
The question asks for the two phrases that should be added to the sentence to explain the relationship between the scientists and the astronauts in carrying out the plant-growing experiments.
CORRECT. The phrase “growing the plants to harvest” should be added to the second box in the sentence. Paragraphs 1 and 2 of the excerpt show that astronauts aboard the ISS are responsible for tending to the plants in the system and harvesting them after the growth cycle is complete.
Incorrect. The phrase “documenting the nutritional goals” should not be added to either box in the sentence. While the excerpt does mention that the experiment is helping gather data about the nutritional value of the peppers, there is no evidence that either the scientists on Earth or the astronauts aboard the ISS are tasked with documenting specific nutritional goals.
Incorrect. The phrase “analyzing the environment” should not be added to either box in the sentence. Although the experiment requires control of environmental factors like light and moisture, the excerpt does not describe or primarily focus on describing how either the scientists on Earth or the astronauts aboard the ISS are responsible for formally analyzing the environment of the habitat as part of the experiment.
CORRECT. The phrase “developing the materials and systems” should be added to the first box in the sentence. The excerpt explains that the scientists on Earth create and prepare the systems, seeds, and equipment needed for the plant-growing experiments in space.
Incorrect. The phrase “determining the most nutritional plants” should not be added to either box in the sentence. Although growing nutritious plants is important, the excerpt does not focus on the scientists on Earth or the astronauts aboard the ISS evaluating or selecting plants based on their nutritional value.
Question analysis
This question asks students to complete a sentence describing how scientists on Earth and astronauts aboard the International Space Station divided the work of the pepper-growing experiment. On the test students drag phrase tiles into two boxes, choosing from five. Each group’s role must be pieced together from details spread across the excerpt, and each tile names a task in general words that must be matched to the text.
- Grade level
- Grade 7 reading and task
- Compared with grade 7
- At grade 7 Explaining how the people in an informational text relate to one another is grade 7 work. Filling two boxes from five tiles with all-or-nothing credit adds some demand, but the excerpt shows the two groups doing clearly different jobs.
- Estimated difficulty
- Moderate: several steps, or a close reading with one strong distractor.
- Thinking it demands
- Depth of knowledge 2, skills and concepts · mainly analyze
- What makes it hard
- The right answer is reworded moderate
- Evidence in several places moderate
- Much to keep track of minor
- Evidence
- Answered from several paragraphs or stanzas
- Reading level
- Passage: about grade 10, 890 words; question and choices: about grade 13, 50 words.
- Students, last 30 days
- Not enough answers yet to show (it takes 10).
Why it is hard, traps and wrong answers (shows the answer)
Why it is hard
The astronauts’ box is the easy half, since the excerpt opens with the crew snipping and catching ripe peppers. The scientists’ box is where points are lost: the right tile is abstract, while the tempting ones name nutrition and the environment, both prominent in the article. Students who match a tile to a phrase they remember, rather than to everything the people on Earth are shown doing, fill the first box wrongly.
The right answer is reworded moderate Choosing the answer
The scientists’ tile, “developing the materials and systems,” sums up preparing seeds, engineering a variety and building the habitat in words the excerpt never uses, while the nutrition tile echoes paragraph 9. (Freedle & Kostin, 1993; Kirsch & Mosenthal, 1990)
Evidence in several places moderate Working it out
The scientists’ work is scattered: the habitat’s technology in paragraphs 3 and 4, Spencer preparing seeds in paragraph 5, Bosland’s engineered variety in paragraphs 7 and 8; the crew’s tending and harvest fill paragraphs 1 and 2. (Kirsch & Mosenthal, 1990; Gorin & Embretson, 2006)
Much to keep track of minor Working it out
Two boxes must both be right from five tiles that cannot be reused, so each group’s whole role must be held in mind while three plausible-sounding tiles are rejected. (Sweller, 1988; Carpenter, Just & Shell, 1990)
Strategy: List what the people on Earth did and what the crew in orbit did, then fill each box with the tile that sums up its list, not one that echoes a single word of the excerpt.
Traps
- Word match: Repeats striking words or phrases from the text, so it looks supported, but its meaning does not fit the question.
- Twists what the text says: Uses the text's topic and ideas but changes what it says: who did it, how much, when, or why.
The wrong answers, classified
EA Word match (Freedle & Kostin, 1993)
Matches “determining the most nutritional plants” to paragraph 9’s “determine the nutritional content of crops,” though the scientists engineered one variety rather than picking the most nutritious among many.
CA Twists what the text says (King et al., 2004)
Gives the scientists “analyzing the environment” because paragraph 2 shows them “observing and conferring,” though the excerpt shows them preparing seeds and systems while the habitat’s sensors monitor conditions.
DC Twists what the text says (King et al., 2004)
Fills the scientists’ box correctly but gives the crew “analyzing the environment,” since they can adjust the light and moisture, though their job is tending the plants through to harvest.
Working it out, step by step
Figure out what the question asks
You need to finish a sentence about who did what. The first box tells what the scientists on Earth did. The second box tells what the astronauts in space did. On the test you drag a tile into each box. Here, you pick each box’s tile from a menu. Each tile can be used only once, and three tiles are left over.
List what the scientists did
- Spencer played “a crucial role in preparing the seeds that were sent hurtling into space” (paragraph 5).
- Bosland and his colleagues “genetically engineered” the pepper seeds (paragraph 7). The footnote says they “combined parts of DNA from different plants to produce a new plant.”
- Growing plants in space “relies on highly specialized technology over 50 years in the making” (paragraph 3).
So the scientists made and got ready what the experiment needed: seeds and machines.
List what the astronauts did
- They “can adjust the color and intensity of the light” for the plants (paragraph 4).
- “The team cracked open the door of the APH every day” to check on the plants (paragraph 6).
- They “snip the stems of those that are ready for harvest” (paragraph 1).
- They finish “after a 137-day growth cycle” (paragraph 2).
So the astronauts cared for the plants until the peppers were ripe, then picked them.
Match a tile to each list
The scientists’ list is about making things: seeds, a new pepper and a high-tech habitat. The tile developing the materials and systems sums that up. Materials are the things you use, like seeds. Systems are machines with many parts, like the habitat. The astronauts’ list is about care and picking. The tile growing the plants to harvest sums that up.
Rule out the other tiles
- documenting the nutritional goals: no one in the article writes down nutrition goals.
- analyzing the environment: the habitat’s sensors “control and monitor” conditions. The crew adjusts light and water, but that is caring for plants, not studying them.
- determining the most nutritional plants: paragraph 9 says the data will “determine the nutritional content of crops.” But no one picks the healthiest plants. Bosland made one special kind.
Watch out: The last tile repeats words from paragraph 9, so it is tempting for the first box. Matching a word is not the same as matching the job.
Fill in both boxes
Scientists on Earth develop the materials and systems for the experiment. Astronauts grow the plants to harvest. So the first box gets developing the materials and systems, and the second box gets growing the plants to harvest.
Why this answer and not the closest wrong one
The most tempting wrong tile for the first box is determining the most nutritional plants, because it echoes paragraph 9. But the scientists in the article prepared seeds, engineered a new pepper and built the habitat. That is developing materials and systems. Nobody compares plants to find the most nutritious one.
More questions like this
The original DOE question
The passage “Excerpt from “Growing Peppers on the ISS Is Just the Start of Space Farming”” as printed (pages 50–51)
