More than half the medicines stocked on the ISS expire within three years, a serious problem for a Mars mission lasting around 400 days. A new University of California San Diego study offers a fix: grow the drugs on board. Researchers cultivated cowpea mosaic virus, a cancer-fighting plant virus, on tobacco-relative and black-eyed pea plants in simulated microgravity, then extracted it without killing the plant. More than half the medicines stocked on the ISS expire within three years, a serious problem for a Mars mission lasting around 400 days. A new University of California San Diego study offers a fix: grow the drugs on board. Researchers cultivated cowpea mosaic virus, a cancer-fighting plant virus, on tobacco-relative and black-eyed pea plants in simulated microgravity, then extracted it without killing the plant.
