Nasa scientists grew corn in space and found that microgravity changed root and shoot growth

Long before astronauts ever plant a seed on the Moon or Mars, Nasa has been testing a much simpler question here on Earth's doorstep: what happens when a corn seed germinates with no gravity to tell it which way to grow? Back in the early 1990s, researchers flew dry corn kernels aboard the space shuttle, let them sprout in orbit, and compared them against identical seedlings grown under normal gravity on the ground. The plants survived. Their tissue looked healthy. But something was clearly missing. Without gravity acting as a compass, the roots and shoots lost their sense of direction entirely, growing in tangled, unpredictable patterns instead of the neat, downward and upward paths seen on Earth. It is a small but telling result, and one that Nasa has kept building on ever since, through experiments on corn and a range of other plants aboard the International Space Station.What happened to corn seeds in space without gravityOne of the clearest examples comes from a Nasa-funded shuttle experiment described in a 1992 paper archived on the agency's Technical Reports Server, hosted by Nasa's Kennedy Space Centre. Researchers imbibed dry corn kernels, launched them into orbit, and all...