NASA shows off its 1st zinnia to bloom on the space station

Zinnias have bloomed on the International Space Station, the first fully grown by NASA in space.

U.S. astronaut Scott Kelly tweeted photos of his orange success over the weekend, wowing millions of people down here on Earth with shots of azero gravity salad-worthyzinnia from thespace station's Veggie lab.

The plants almost never made it to maturity though,as the zinnias were covered inmould back inlate December.

Two weeks after plantinga batch of zinnias,KjellLindgren, another NASA astronaut, saw that water was leaking out of the leaves, according to NASA. There were multiple signs that the plants appeared to be drowning.

"When you have high humidity and wet surfaces leaves start dying, and become prime real estate for mould to grow," Trent Smith, the Veggie project manager, told NASAin a release published Saturday.

Lindgrenhanded off gardening duties to Kelly when he returned to Earth on Dec. 18, but once Kellyarrived, the zinnias had twisted leaves and werealready partiallydead. Mould began to spread on the plants.

Kelly sliced off the mouldy tissue, sanitized the remainder, and then tried to dry out the zinnias with fans. Those mouldy pieces were then stored away for further study on Earth.

The fans, however, thencaused the plants to become too dry.

On Christmas Eve,Kelly told the ground support team that they needed to be watered, but there was nothing in the watering schedule until Dec. 27. So, Kelly askedif he could just water them himself.

NASA laterreferred to him as "an autonomous gardener aboard the space station."

Two of the plants died, but two zinnias likely destined for furtherstudy (or a later lunch) survived.

The whole space gardening enterprise is designed to help scientists study how plants react to being grown offEarth, and to prepareastronauts for a future trip to Mars.

The prospectof a Mars trip was one reasonKelly felt justified in taking overthe plants' care (and why he made a reference toThe Martian's Mark Watney).

"You know, I think if we're going to Mars, and we were growing stuff, we would be responsible for deciding when the stuff needed water," he said to the ground team, according to NASA."Kind of like in my backyard, I look at it and say 'Oh, maybe I should water the grass today.' I think this is how this should be handled."

These are not the first plants NASA hasgrown on the space station, or even the first flowers to bloom in space but they are NASA's first flowerthat has grown entirely, from seed to maturity, in space.

In 1982, Russian cosmonauts managed to grow rockcress on the Salyut-7 satellite, according to theGuinness World Records.

The last time NASA tried to grow plants in space, astronauts raised some red romaine lettuce. That's after theyaccidentally drowned some, however, showing that in some ways, astronauts are just like the rest of us:They occasionally over-water or dry outtheir plants.

But unlike the rest of us, theyget to taste the fruits of their labour while in orbit.