NASA needed to test crops in harsh environments. These SC arts teens stepped in.

Six students in downtown Greenville whose attention most of the day is fixed on drama, visual art and animation are helping NASA figure out how to feed astronauts, one head of lettuce at a time.

The environmental science class at the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities has joined a global network of K-12 schools that are partnering with NASA in its “Growing Beyond Earth” program to figure out what plants are best suited to grow in space. The hope is that one day NASA will have a long menu of fresh foods that astronauts can cultivate and eat raw — something they do a lot since open flames are not a thing on spaceships.

Anne Byford, the Governor’s School teacher in charge, said K-12 students around the world are trying to help NASA answer three questions: what grows best, what tastes best and what yields the highest nutrition. Participating schools — which also include C.E. Williams-South Middle in Charleston — are assigned crops to grow.

The program is well-suited to the Governor’s School, where hands-on projects, small classes and creative inquiry are the norm.

Between classes, an English teacher rolled by, dressed for Halloween as a roller derby queen. A minute later, a history teacher paused to wave at the school’s dean, Jennifer Thomas. He wore a powdered wig and a giant cardboard one-dollar bill draped over his shoulders.

Administrators have documented that after students arrive at the public, all-residential tuition-free school (room and board is $4,500) — selected for their artistic ability over academics — their GPAs rise. The school’s 85-percent pass rate on AP exams also is fifth highest in the state, behind a handful of academic magnet schools.

“We just know that they were committed enough to audition, apply and move away from home,” Thomas said. “You know, they've already shown so much grit and passion that we can work with that, and that translates to academic success.”

NASA has been partnering with hundreds of schools all over the planet on the project since 2015 — in part because they offer a variety of environments and growing conditions for plants, from Alaska to Australia, Byford said. The people tending the plants (teenagers) are not crop experts — making them appropriate stand-ins for astronauts who one day will be tasked with growing food on the moon, she said.

“Schools are not the friendliest environment,” Byford said. “They're not as controlled as somebody's greenhouse, for example. And space is not a gentle environment.”

Her six students scurried around the classroom grabbing rulers, whiteboards and cameras on a recent Friday to document their plants’ growth. They crowded around the classroom’s growth chamber — supplied by Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden — and pulled out six tiny pots.

“Do they look a little sad?” one of the students asked about a wilted mizuna.

“I think they didn't quite get enough water early,” Byford observed. “I reduced the amount of water we put in earlier and probably we shouldn’t have.”

A medical geneticist by training, Byford brings decades of experience to the classroom. She taught for 21 years at a private school in Cherokee County and then two years at Limestone University. In addition to environmental science, she teaches anatomy, physiology and biology at the school, which reserves afternoons for arts classes.

Thomas, who has worked at the school since it opened in 1999, started out as an English teacher. One advantage: She always knew what made her students tick, just by their chosen art. Classes at the 230-student school are small.

“Like they call themselves a poet when they're 16 years old,” she said. “You know that secret ingredient that makes that teenager think, ‘This is why I'm here,’ even if they don't go into it for a career, we don't mind.”

Gabriella Stocker, a junior visual artist, paused from her measurements to explain why she is taking Byford’s class. She’s not a big fan of numbers and equations, she said, but connects to environmental science on an emotional level. One highlight: testing water tumbling over the Reedy River Falls in downtown Greenville, a two-minute walk from campus. The kids found E. coli and observed large amounts of waste from a flock of geese that dwell on the river’s shores.

“Don’t get near it!” Stocker said.

Astronauts need the plants for sustenance and, someday, for the extra oxygen they will produce, but they also connect with the plants as little pets, Byford said.

Science and the arts aren’t separate things, she added. Byford quilts, takes photographs and sings in the Foothills Chorale.

“The crossover is real.”

Paolina Loubiere, a 16-year-old drama student from Greenville, beamed as she leaned in to get an accurate reading on her mizuna plant’s height — subsequently confirmed by two of her colleagues. Byford will submit results from the experiment to NASA over the weekend.

“I think it's important to learn about our environment, and I think it educates a future generation that needs to protect it,” she said.

After four weeks of growth and a thorough wash, the mizuna greens and Australian Yellowleaf lettuce were ready to be plated up.

SOURCE: "NASA needed to test crops in harsh environments. These SC arts teens stepped in." by Anna B. Mitchell via the Post & Courier.

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