In July 2021, NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station started growing chile peppers in the Advanced Plant Habitat, as part of the Plant Habitat-04 (PH-04) experiment. The astronauts and a team of researchers at Kennedy worked together to monitor the peppers’ growth before harvesting them. In this image from Sept. 30, 2021, chile flowers and buds can be seen.
PH-04 was one of the longest and most challenging plant experiments attempted aboard the orbital lab. The second harvest resulted in a bumper crop: the 26 chile peppers grown broke the record for feeding the most astronauts from a crop grown in space.
Image credit: NASA/Megan McArthur