Spaceflight Procedures and Operations Utilized During the Seedling Growth Experiments

Spaceflight experiments offer a unique environment for fundamental research in biology. Utilization of microgravity environments has provided insights into how plants and animals perceive and respond to gravity, or the lack thereof. However, performing spaceflight experiments on the International Space Station (ISS) requires years of planning and testing before execution. A few of the complex steps preceding the experiment include: development of the experimental timeline and programming of experimental equipment, testing hardware for biocompatibility, planning the logistics of sending samples to NASA or ESA centers for testing, and launching samples to the ISS. In this paper, using the Seedling Growth-2 spaceflight experiment as an example, we cover the entire timeline leading up to a flight experiment. These events include the Schedule Test, the Operations and Validations Test (OVT), and the Flight Build and Experiment, as well as the post-flight sample processing.