Description	Strawberries and salad crops growing at the Space Life Sciences Laboratory at Kennedy Space Center in Florida will provide more than nutrition to astronauts when they're on their way to the Moon, Mars and beyond. In the state-of-the-art lab the plants are growing in environmental growth chambers that mimic the atmosphere on the International Space Station. Plants are being tested for their ability to nourish the crew physically and psychologically and have been used for therapeutic purposes in space for years. (Jeff Richards, plant physiologist, Dynamac Corporation) 'On a long-duration missions, eventually they're going to miss looking at the Earth out of their windows. They're going to lose that perception, lose that closeness to their home planet. So one of the things that plants can provide is actually that psychological feel that they're bringing a piece of Earth with them.' While tending the crops, the crew exhales carbon dioxide which the plants need to survive. The plants create
Date	Taken
Source	commons.wikimedia.org
Author	NASA Kennedy Space Center

KSC-05-S-00054 (ksc 022805 strawberry connec)

Summary