Hey everyone. Welcome to an interactive lesson by Science Journal for Kids and Teens. This is a lesson about astronauts growing food in space. Astronauts mainly eat processed foods while they are in space, but over time, the nutrients in this food can break down. Luckily, there is a plant growth chamber on the International Space Station that astronauts can use to do experiments related to growing their own food. A couple of major concerns include whether the food grown in space is safe and whether it actually has the nutrients that processed foods may lose. Being able to grow food in space will be essential to long-term missions like trips to Mars.

This interactive lesson is based on peer-reviewed academic research and follows the sections of a scientific paper: introduction, methods, results, and discussion. Start each section by watching a short video with information for you. Then you can see a list of key points. Make sure you take the time to explore our interactive videos, graphs, and diagrams in this section. At the end of each section, we have checkpoint questions, which make sure you’ve understood the information. You can even check your answers and retry the questions. 

After you’ve worked your way through all sections of the lesson, take the final quiz to demonstrate your understanding of the research. Be careful here because you cannot check your answers along the way or retry questions like you could before. Once you’re done, you’ll see your score and the questions you missed. 

Finally, you’ll get to a summary screen. You might want to take a screenshot and share it with your teacher to show that you completed the lesson. 

We hope you learn a lot and have fun along the way! Thanks for interacting with us here at Science Journal for Kids!