MOSCOW, November 10. /TASS/. After staging an experiment with growing sweet pepper in a new greenhouse aboard the International Space Station (ISS), Russian cosmonauts will try to grow wheat and salad, Deputy Director of the Institute of Medical and Biological Problems Vladimir Sychyov said on Thursday.
"A new greenhouse, Lada-2, will be delivered to the ISS in December and we’re beginning a new series of experiments. The first experiment will be highly difficult because the crop we’re going to grow is the crop that has never been grown in outer space. This is sweet pepper," he said.
"If we succeed, this will be fine. After pepper, we’ll be most likely growing wheat and probably after it salad crops," Sychyov said.
Russia, US plan to send mice to ISS
Sychyovwent on to say that plans are in store to send 20 mice to the ISS next year as part of a joint Russian-US experiment project.
The experiment will be carried out to study the influence of spaceflight factors on physiology, Sychov said.
"The idea of the experiment is to send 20 mice onboard. They will spend 30 days there and will be brought back to the Earth alive," he said.
The experiment will be similar to the April 2013 mission when the same number of mice blasted off to space onboard the Bion-M space capsule. The vessel is designed for conducting research in space biology, physiology and biotechnologies.