Cowpea seeds sprouts in space, leaves expected soon, says ISRO

The common legumes were taken into space on December 30, 2024 and are part of a platform to grow and sustain flora in extra terrestrial environments.
| Photo Credit: X/@isro
A batch of cowpea seeds — better known as lobia in Hindi or thattapayaru in Tamil — have successfully sprouted in space, days after they were taken into orbit by an Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) mission. The space agency has also successfully operated India’s first space robotic arm, it announced on Saturday (January 4, 2025).
The two experiments were part of the 24 payloads flown on the PSLV-C60 SpaDeX mission’s PS4-Orbital Experiment Module (POEM-4) on December 30, 2024.
In a series of posts on X, ISRO said, “Life sprouts in space! VSSC’s CROPS (Compact Research Module for Orbital Plant Studies) experiment onboard PSLV-C60 POEM-4 successfully sprouted cowpea seeds in 4 days. Leaves expected soon.”
“#RRM_TD, India’s first space robotic arm, is in action onboard #POEM4! A proud #MakeInIndia milestone in space robotics. #ISRO #SpaceTech,” the agency said in another post.
Growing crops in space
The CROPS payload, developed by the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), is envisioned as a multi-phase platform to develop and evolve ISRO’s capabilities for growing and sustaining flora in extra terrestrial environments.

“Designed as a fully automated system, a five to seven-day experiment is planned to demonstrate seed germination and plant sustenance until the two-leaf stage in a microgravity environment,” ISRO had said prior to the launch. The experiment plans to grow eight cowpea seeds in a closed-box environment with active thermal control.
Walking robotic arm
The Relocatable Robotic Manipulator-Technology Demonstrator (RRM-TD), also known as the Walking Robotic Arm, is India’s first space robotic manipulator with walking capability, developed by IISU. It is a 7 Degree of Freedom (DoF) robotic arm that will perform relocation through ‘inchworm walking’ to defined targets on the POEM-4 platform.
“This experiment will demonstrate a large workspace for in-orbit servicing with robotic manipulators comprising indigenous robotic joints and arm controllers, a grappling mechanism and standardised adaptor with power and data transfer, cameras for eye-in-hand operation, and advanced software architecture with obstacle-aware motion planning and several layers of safety features deployed on a high-compute processor,” ISRO said.
It added that the experiment will serve as a precursor technology demonstrator for certain robotic technologies of Bharatiya Antariksh Station (BAS), such as end-on-end walking, microgravity operation of robotic arms, vision-based 6DoF pose estimation, visual inspection of stages, robotic manipulation through visual servoing and compliance control, harness-free operation using power and data grappling fixtures, tele-operation, and a digital twin.
Published – January 04, 2025 07:05 pm IST
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