Zinnia: The first flower ever grown in space

Updated: Tuesday, January 19, 2016, 12:53 [IST]

Washington, Jan 18: For the first time ever an astronaut has achieved success in blooming a flower in the space. This is the first time a flowering crop has grown on the orbiting laboratory.

American astronaut Scott Kelly, who has been working since March 2015 on the space laboratory took Twitter to announce the other forms of life on space on Saturday.

First flower grown in space — Twitter image

"First ever flower grown in space makes its debut," tweeted astronaut Scott Kelly.

NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren activated the Veggie plant growth system and its rooting "pillows" containing Zinnia seeds on the space station in November last year.

Growing Zinnias in orbit will help provide precursory information about other flowering plants that could be grown in space.

During the growth cycle, the LED lights were kept on for 10 hours and off for 14 hours in order to stimulate the plants to flower.

Veggie, along with two sets of pillows containing romaine seeds and one set of zinnias, was delivered to the station by SpaceX on the third cargo resupply mission in April 2014.