The families who recently attended the Saturday Afternoon Special, "Tune Into PBS Picture Book Science" at the Grissom Branch Library received a special treat ... a chance to see tomato seeds that had been in space.
Marchelle Canright of NASA-Langley Research Center conducted the program and presented a seed kit to Gene Miller, children's specialist for the Newport News Public Library System. The Grissom library is a site for the Seeds from Space program which NASA is sponsoring.
This program involves growing 50 seeds that have been exposed to a deep space environment and 50 control seeds from the same lot. For nearly six years the seeds were exposed to the harsh environment of space, subjected to cosmic radiation, temperature extremes, weightlessness and the vacuum of space. Observers will be looking for possible mutations to the tomato plant, such as changes in fruit size and color, growth rate, and leaf, stem and stalk shapes and sizes. The Rutgers tomato seeds that will be used in this experiment are from the Park Seed Company.
The Space Exposed Experiment Developed for Students (SEEDS) was one of the 57 experiments housed on the recently recovered 11-ton Long Duration Exposure Facility satellite, which was developed at the nearby NASA-Langley Research Center. After a nearly six-year voyage in space, the 12.5 million tomato seeds were rescued by the crew of the space shuttle Columbia on Jan. 12.
The public is invited to stop by the library and view the seeds weekly to check their development.