12K likes, 105 comments - iss on April 17, 2026: "These plants packed company for their trip to space! 🌱🦠 A new plant study called Veg-06 has arrived aboard the space station to observe how legume plants interact with microbes. In a process called symbiotic nitrogen fixation, some plants can team up with microbes to pull nitrogen from the air and use this to support their growth. Nitrogen-fixing plants include many foods such as beans, peas, and peanuts. 🫛 To understand if this partnership will work on the space station, researchers will track how the plants grow in orbit and then study their tissues back on Earth. They’ll also evaluate how well plants grow with less lignin content, an important component of the plant cell wall that may not be as necessary in the space environment. Reduced lignin may allow for inedible plant parts to be recycled more readily, providing supplemental nutrition for plants. ♻️🍃".