Photos of a Zinnia flower grown inside the Veggie facility onboard the International Space Station. This flowering crop experiment began on Nov. 16, 2015, when NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren activated the Veggie system and its rooting "pillows" containing zinnia seeds. The challenging process of growing the zinnias provided an exceptional opportunity for scientists back on Earth to better understand how plants grow in microgravity, and for astronauts to practice doing what they’ll be tasked with on a deep space mission: autonomous gardening. The first flowers grown from seed in space happened before Mir, on Salyut-6 in 1982. Russian and American scientists have been doing plant research in space since the late 1970s.