Crew 204 Science Report 05-FEB-2019
Science report
Title: Happy hour germination
Author: Avishek Ghosh
1. Sprouting of seeds
Team: Sonal Baberwal, Avishek Ghosh
It feels great to see the initial stage of germination and plant growth in different soil compositions that are prepared by varying the amount of garden soil and carbon dust (extracted from charcoal) by combining with MDRS soil and JSC-MARS-1. The JSC-MARS-1 and it’s organic mixtures seem more promising as compared to local MDRS soil mixtures. The plants that are transferred from regular garden soil to JSC-MARS-1 Mixtures are surviving and growing even the germinated seeds started sprouting.
But, the MDRS local soil and it’s organic compositions seems to hold less capacity to provide enough nutrients to the plants which started dying on the first day of transfer. At the same time, the water is drying out quickly from these mixtures.
Although it is the initial stage of the investigation, however, more iterations through a long duration observation are required to derive the conclusions.
2. Experimental Greenhab preparation
Team: Pranit Patil, Sonal Baberwal, Avishek Ghosh
The crew is happy to see new seeds are sprouting and growing quickly. A few of them are actually turning into the green with leaves. Initially, after transfer, the plants were surviving during the first day but slowly started dying on local MDRS soil mixtures.
3. Rover assembly and integration
Kunal Naik (Space_Bot)
The technical difficulties in rover were resolved this morning. The battery test and camera have performed well during the EVA. The rover started rolling on MDRS terrains.