UF Scientist Prepares To Launch Into Space Thursday, Aug. 29

As a crew member on board the Blue Origin New Shepard rocket, UF/IFAS researcher Rob Ferl will conduct his own study on plants in space

What does the adaptation process look like for plants in space?

That’s the question the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) hopes to answer with a novel space-based experiment happening on Thursday, August 29th, at 9 a.m. EST when a UF/IFAS horticultural sciences researcher launches with his experiment into suborbital space on a Blue Origin New Shepard rocket.

Rob Ferl, Ph.D., the University of Florida Astraeus Space Institute director, will fly in the Blue Origin craft and perform the experiment himself. The experiment builds on prior research that showed a type of plant – Arabidopsis thaliana – can detect that it is in space and then change how its genes are expressed.

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