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<\/p>\n5 cool science experiments, from space<\/p>\n
Growing lettuce, taming fire, chilling atoms to the coldest point in the universe and hunting for invisible matter\u2026\u00a0 The International Space Station is home to some of the weirdest and most important experiments ever run. Here are six of our favorites.<\/p>\n
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Inside the Veggie flight laboratory in the Space Station Processing Facility at NASA\u2019s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Matthew Romeyn, a NASA Pathways intern from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, harvests a portion of the ‘Outredgeous’ red romaine lettuce from the Veg-03 ground control unit. The purpose of the ground Veggie system is to provide a control group to compare against the lettuce grown in orbit on the International Space Station. Veg-03 will continue NASA\u2019s deep space plant growth research to benefit the Earth and the agency\u2019s journey to Mars.<\/p>\n
(NASA \/ Cory Huston)<\/p>\n
Space salad<\/p>\n
Yep. We can grow food in space! The Vegetable Production System<\/a>, also known as the Veggie mission, is the space garden where it happens.<\/p>\n NASA hopes it can help them study plant growth in microgravity, while \u201cadding fresh food to the astronauts\u2019 diet and enhancing happiness and well-being on the orbiting laboratory.\u201d<\/p>\n (MORE: NASA fast-tracks its plans for a moon base with 3 launches in 2026<\/a>)<\/p>\n Most astronaut food is in the form of freeze-dried and prepackaged meals. The challenges in growing fresh produce are a closed environment without sunlight or Earth\u2019s gravity. What sustains the plants are the \u201cpillows\u201d they grow in, filled with a clay-based growth media and fertilizer.<\/p>\n \u201cWe already know from our pioneering astronauts that fresh flowers and gardens on the International Space Station create a beautiful atmosphere and let us take a little piece of Earth with us on our journeys,\u201d NASA says<\/a>.<\/p>\n Multiple images pulled from an intensified camera filtered to look for the very faint emissions of a cool flame during a run of the CFI-G experiment show the hot flame going out and a cool flame appearing.<\/p>\n (NASA)<\/p>\n Fire spheres<\/p>\n Flames, just like almost anything, behave differently in space. The tapered point of a candle flame turns into a round sphere, for example.<\/p>\n And flames that burn at extremely low temperatures, known as cool flames<\/a>, are nearly impossible to create in Earth\u2019s gravity.<\/p>\n In this combustion<\/a> experiment, scientists dropped a blazing hot fire sphere into total darkness, yet it continued to burn invisibly at a low temperature.<\/p>\n Now, car and aircraft engine manufacturers use this data to design hyper-efficient, low-emission engines.<\/p>\n Nickelodon’s Slime in Space in the cupola of the ISS.<\/p>\n (NASA)<\/p>\n Slimy green goo<\/p>\n While this experiment is fun, it\u2019s not all games. It\u2019s actually a fascinatingly unique opportunity to research physics<\/a>, more specifically, examining liquid behavior in microgravity.<\/p>\n For anyone who grew up watching Nickelodeon, this is quite literally their slime sent directly from Earth to the International Space Station.<\/p>\n Since slime has a different viscosity than water, but is still a liquid, astroanuts got to play with it<\/a>, creating bubbles, trying to cut it, putting it on a paddleboard and more \u2014 all while conducting original research.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Cold Atom Lab is a facility for the study of ultra-cold quantum gases in the microgravity environment of the International Space Station (ISS).<\/p>\n (NASA)<\/p>\n Creating the coldest known spot in the universe<\/p>\n The Cold Atom Lab<\/a> is a facility for the study of ultra-cold quantum gases for quantum physics research.<\/p>\n It uses lasers and magnetic fields to chill clouds of atoms down to less than a degree above absolute zero. These clouds can then form a fifth state of matter \u2014 outside of gases, liquids, solids and plasmas \u2014 called a Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC).<\/p>\n (MORE: NASA spacecraft snaps stunning Mars views during flyby<\/a>)<\/p>\n This experiment set a record<\/a> for creating the coldest known spot in the universe.<\/p>\n The subjects behind the experiment that compared retired astronaut Scott Kelly while he was in space, to his identical twin brother, retired astronaut Mark Kelly, who remained on Earth.<\/p>\n (NASA)<\/p>\n Twin study<\/p>\n NASA sent one twin, Scott Kelly, into orbit in space on a year-long mission, while the other twin, Mark Kelly, stayed here on Earth. Both are now retired astronauts.<\/p>\n From this, dubbed the Twin Study<\/a>, they were able to look at what physiological, molecular and cognitive changes could happen to a human from exposure to spaceflight.<\/p>\n Ultimately, while some changes were observed in the space twin throughout the course of the study, researchers found<\/a> that many of these returned to preflight levels by the study\u2019s end. This exhibited the resilience of the human body to adapt to extreme environments.<\/p>\n Exterior view of the International Space Station (ISS) taken during a session of Extravehicular Activity (EVA) with a fisheye camera. The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer – 2 (AMS-2) is visible in the right foreground and a Soyuz spacecraft is visible docked to the Pirs Docking Compartment (DC1\/CO1). The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer – 02 (AMS-02) is a high profile space-based particle physics experiment. As the largest and most advanced magnetic spectrometer in space, AMS-02 will collect information from cosmic sources emanating from stars and galaxies millions of light years beyond the Milky Way.<\/p>\n (NASA)<\/p>\n The invisible universe: dark matter, antimatter and missing matter<\/p>\n This sounds like a line straight out of science fiction: The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer<\/a> (AMS-02), a 15,000-pound particle physics detector, is parsing through hundreds of billions of cosmic rays.<\/p>\n It is humanity\u2019s primary instrument for searching for and exploring the unknown: dark matter, antimatter and missing matter.<\/p>\n The hope is that it can expand our knowledge of the universe and provide a clearer understanding of its origins<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"Multiple](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/space_experiments_cool_flame_60926j-71e6ef.peg.jpeg\"\/)
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