Bugbee has received NASA funding for some of his plant work, including the wheat, though nothing directly for his assistance with the USU-Russia experiments. As part of the deal, Russians pick the plants to grow. This time around, it could be lettuce or spinach, Bugbee said. One early challenge for space crops was controlling water. Bugbee said this can be seen when picking a water-soaked sponge off the table and holding it vertically.
Gravity forces some of the water to drip out of the sponge.
With no gravity in space, the water in a sponge stays put. Likewise, water in space would simply ball up in regular soil, he said. To avoid this problem, USU has used a material called Arcillite, which is sand-sized chips of baked clay. As long as the tiny chips are close enough together, the water creeps evenly through the material thanks to capillary action. Ethylene posed another problem in space crops.