Mold on Space Station flowers is helping develop autonomous gardening

"By Christmas Eve, though, Kelly called down to the ground support team to report new problems with the plants. It seemed the high fan speed was drying out the crop too much, and Kelly said he thought they needed more water. He was told, though, that the next scheduled watering was not until Dec. 27.

"I think that would be too late," Kelly told the ground team. "You know, I think if we're going to Mars, and we were growing stuff, we would be responsible for deciding when the stuff needed water. Kind of like in my backyard, I look at it and say 'Oh, maybe I should water the grass today.' I think this is how this should be handled."

I mean, that makes sense, but then again don't we want to be able to fully automate this?

Is a problem if your edible plants make flowers too early. Good for PR, bad for space travels. In this case is promoted probably for the dry period. They need to be aware that this is a problem and try to fix it.