Discovery News reports a team from Kennedy Space Center is tending to a greenhouse in Arizona, with the goal of getting the system ready for a test run aboard the International Space Station. The unit, built by Wisconsin-based Orbital Technologies, is designed to be lightweight, energy-efficient and low maintenance.
Light for the plants comes from a combination of red, green and blue LEDs. The growing medium contains seeds and time-release fertilizer. Water wicks passively through the system.
“It has held up very well,” NASA’s lead scientist Ray Wheeler says. “We didn’t have any failures.”