PESTO: Microgravity Effects on Dwarf Wheat from 73-Day Spaceflight

The PESTO experiment collected data from dwarf wheat grown for 73 days aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis in 2002. Over 6,600 images of wheat chambers were collected in flight and ground control, along with environmental data exceeding 2 gigabytes and samples from over 150 plants for biochemical analysis. The study was conducted by NASA, with a synchronized ground control experiment delayed by 14 days to simulate a 1g environment.

Use Cases

• Compare leaf morphology and cell structure between space-grown and ground-control plants based on the 18 plants fixed on orbit.
• Analyze changes in carbon metabolism and mRNA expression using biochemical and molecular samples from over 150 frozen plants.
• Model plant growth dynamics in microgravity using over 2 GB of environmental data collected from flight and ground units.
• Study developmental stage effects using the staggered planting ages of mature and young plants mentioned in the description.

Strengths

• Includes a synchronized 14-day-delayed ground control experiment for direct 1g vs. microgravity comparison.
• Contains a multimodal dataset with over 6,600 images, 2+ GB of environmental data, and physical samples from over 150 plants.
• Covers three staggered growth cycles, allowing study of plants at different developmental stages.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for specific modeling tasks.
• Data is from a single mission in 2002; temporal generalizability may be limited.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Experiment conducted aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis (STS-110/STS-111) with a ground control in the Orbiter Environment Simulator.

Time Range

Spaceflight experiment conducted from April 8, 2002 to June 19, 2002.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 20:00:27.873476; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Spaceflight (low Earth orbit) and ground control at Kennedy Space Center.