NASA Texas

Chile Flowers Bloom in Space

September 11, 2024

    

A small flower's white petals stretch outward in the center of the image. The petals are slightly curly at the edges. There are bright and dark green leaves of varying sizes as well as flower buds around the flower. Other plants are out of focus in the background at left.
Chile pepper plants growing in the Advanced Plant Habitat aboard the International Space Station bore fruit in the late summer and fall of 2021. Overcoming the challenges of growing fruit in microgravity is important to NASA for long-duration missions during which crew members will need good sources of Vitamin C to supplement their diets.
NASA/Megan McArthur

In July 2021, NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station started growing chile peppers in the Advanced Plant Habitat, as part of the Plant Habitat-04 (PH-04) experiment. The astronauts and a team of researchers at Kennedy worked together to monitor the peppers’ growth before harvesting them. In this image from Sept. 30, 2021, chile flowers and buds can be seen.

PH-04 was one of the longest and most challenging plant experiments attempted aboard the orbital lab. The second harvest resulted in a bumper crop: the 26 chile peppers grown broke the record for feeding the most astronauts from a crop grown in space.

Image credit: NASA/Megan McArthur