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Fact check resurrection fern on Space Shuttle

Source: Amy and ChatGPT #1356

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Verification of the “Resurrection Fern on Space Shuttle Discovery in 1997” Claim in NASA Literature
Executive summary
The specific sentence you quoted — “In 1997, the resurrection fern Pleopeltis polypodioides was taken into space aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery to watch its resurrection in zero gravity.” — does not appear (verbatim or near-verbatim) in the NASA primary mission materials I could access and check directly (STS-85 mission page and the STS-85 press kit PDF). 
However, there is a tight, historically plausible match for the underlying event in NASA-adjacent (and very likely NASA-published) documentation:
<ul>
<li>Mission/vehicle/year: NASA’s official STS-85 mission page states the orbiter was Discovery and the mission launched Aug. 7, 1997. </li>
<li>NASA program context: The STS-85 press kit explicitly describes the Space Experiment Module (SEM) as a NASA-sponsored student experiment initiative flying “zero-gravity and micro-gravity experiments” on the Shuttle; it also lists student groups involved on STS-85 (including CAN-DO, Charleston, SC), though it does not name a fern experiment. </li>
<li>Direct naming of the organism: A text copy of content attributed to the 1999 Shuttle Small Payloads Symposium describes a Resurrection Fern experiment and names the plant as “Resurrection Fern (Polypodium polypodioides)”, stating “Students gathered the sample flown on STS-85…”. </li>
<li>Taxonomy mismatch versus your quote: The NASA-era material uses the older name Polypodium polypodioides rather than Pleopeltis polypodioides; the latter is a modernized genus placement you’ll see in contemporary references. </li>
</ul>
Bottom line: NASA mission/press materials confirm STS-85/Discovery/1997 and that SEM flew “zero-gravity/microgravity” student experiments.  The only source located that explicitly ties a “resurrection fern” (named as Polypodium polypodioides) to STS-85 is inside symposium-style documentation that appears to be a NASA conference publication—but I could not retrieve the official NTRS-hosted full proceedings PDF in this run to quote it from NASA’s own file. 
Claim decomposition and verification criteria
You asked to verify five attributes. Here is the target claim decomposed into testable parts:
<ul>
<li>Organism identity: “resurrection fern Pleopeltis polypodioides”</li>
<li>Date: “1997”</li>
<li>Vehicle: “Space Shuttle Discovery”</li>
<li>Mission identifier: “mission name/number”</li>
<li>Experiment meaning: “observe/watch its ‘resurrection’ (rehydration/recovery) in microgravity/zero gravity”</li>
</ul>
For this research, the strictest standard is: a NASA-controlled primary source (nasa.gov press kit, mission report, payload manifest, NTRS technical report, NASA conference publication PDF) that explicitly states the plant + flight + purpose.
What NASA primary/official sources do and do not say
STS-85 is the best-fit Discovery mission in 1997, and NASA documents it clearly
NASA’s official STS-85 mission page lists:
<ul>
<li>Orbiter: Discovery</li>
<li>Launch: Aug. 7, 1997</li>
<li>Mission: STS-85 </li>
</ul>
This meets your year/vehicle/mission criteria at the mission level.
NASA’s STS-85 press kit confirms that “SEM” flew microgravity/zero-gravity student experiments, but it does not name the fern
The NASA-hosted STS-85 press kit PDF includes a dedicated “Space Experiment Module (SEM)” section describing SEM as a NASA Shuttle Small Payloads Project education initiative that provides modules for students to fly “zero-gravity and micro-gravity experiments” on the Space Shuttle. 
It also enumerates who sponsored SEM experiments scheduled to fly on STS-85 (including “CAN-DO, Charleston, SC”), and it lists some experiment categories (radiation measurement, sound acquisition, dispersion of paint, plus multiple passive items). 
Critically: searching the press kit text reveals no occurrences of “fern,” “resurrection,” “Pleopeltis,” or “polypodioides.” 
So, as a NASA press kit, it supports the platform and program context, but not the specific fern assertion.
NASA NTRS: SEM flight history ties “SEM-02” to STS-85/Discovery (Aug 7, 1997) but still doesn’t list individual experiment names
A NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS) PDF titled “Space Experiment Module (SEM)” contains an SEM flight history list including: “SEM-02 STS-85 Space Shuttle Discovery” and “Launch date: August 7, 1997.” 
This is a strong NASA primary reference for:
<ul>
<li>the NASA-managed SEM program, and</li>
<li>its deployment on STS-85/Discovery/1997.</li>
</ul>
But it still does not name a resurrection fern experiment or any plant species. 
NASA NTRS indicates the 1999 Shuttle Small Payloads Symposium exists as a NASA conference publication, but I could not retrieve the Proceedings PDF in this run
NTRS hosts a record for “1999 Shuttle Small Payloads Symposium” with report number NASA/CP-1999-209476. 
During this research run, attempts to download the associated proceedings PDF via the NTRS download link failed (HTTP error). 
That failure matters because it prevents me from quoting the fern-related text directly from NASA’s own hosted proceedings file, even though the record exists on NTRS.
The closest “direct statement” located: symposium text naming Polypodium polypodioides and STS-85
The most explicit statement tying a resurrection fern to STS-85 comes from a searchable transcript of text associated with the Shuttle Small Payloads symposium proceedings. In that text:
<ul>
<li>The organism is labeled “Resurrection Fern ( Polypodium polypodioides )”. </li>
<li>It states that “Students gathered the sample flown on STS-85…”. </li>
<li>It includes a results-style description consistent with “resurrection” monitoring, referencing chlorophyll fluorescence changes and “rapid revival” after dormancy. </li>
</ul>
This meets your mission + organism name + experiment intent criteria in content, but it is not, by itself, a NASA-hosted primary file. It is best interpreted as a likely reproduction / OCR text extraction of NASA’s conference publication (NASA/CP-1999-209476), which NTRS confirms exists. 
Because I could not retrieve the NASA-hosted proceedings PDF here, I cannot claim a fully closed loop of: “NASA-hosted PDF → quoted fern passage.” The evidence is strong, but not maximally clean.
Taxonomy reality check: Pleopeltis polypodioides vs Polypodium polypodioides
Your quoted sentence uses Pleopeltis polypodioides. The symposium text uses Polypodium polypodioides. 
This is not a trivial typo—it reflects shifting fern taxonomy over time. Modern references commonly recognize resurrection fern as Pleopeltis polypodioides (often with discussions about varieties and close relatives). 
So, if NASA documentation from the 1990s names the fern, expect “Polypodium polypodioides” to appear more often than “Pleopeltis polypodioides.” Your quote may be a modernized paraphrase that swapped in a later genus name without preserving NASA’s original wording. 

 

 

 

 
Source comparison table
The table below is intentionally blunt: it separates (a) sources that truly support the full claim from (b) sources that only support parts (mission/year/vehicle/program), and it flags taxonomy wording.

<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Source</th>
<th>URL</th>
<th>Exact quoted text</th>
<th>Supports the claim?</th>
<th>Notes on what it proves and reliability</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>NASA STS-85 mission page </td>
<td>https://www.nasa.gov/mission/sts-85/</td>
<td>“Space Shuttle: Discovery … Launch: Aug. 7, 1997”</td>
<td>Partial</td>
<td>High reliability (official nasa.gov mission summary). Confirms Discovery + 1997 + STS-85, but does not mention any fern experiment. </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>NASA STS-85 press kit (PDF) </td>
<td>https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/sts-085-press-kit.pdf</td>
<td>“The Space Experiment Module (SEM) Program… provides… modules… to fly zero-gravity and micro-gravity experiments…”</td>
<td>Partial</td>
<td>High reliability (official NASA press kit). Establishes NASA-sponsored microgravity student experiments on the mission, but no fern named. </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>NASA STS-85 press kit search results (negative evidence) </td>
<td>https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/sts-085-press-kit.pdf</td>
<td>“No matching text found for ‘fern’”</td>
<td>Negative</td>
<td>High reliability as “absence check” inside a NASA document. It directly refutes the idea that this press kit explicitly states the fern claim. </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>NASA NTRS fact sheet on SEM </td>
<td>https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19990087489/downloads/19990087489.pdf</td>
<td>“SEM-02 STS-85 Space Shuttle Discovery … Launch date: August 7, 1997”</td>
<td>Partial</td>
<td>High reliability (NASA NTRS PDF). Connects SEM to STS-85/Discovery/1997, but does not list the resurrection fern experiment by name. </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>NTRS record for the 1999 Shuttle Small Payloads Symposium </td>
<td>https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19990087485</td>
<td>“Report/Patent Number: NASA/CP-1999-209476”</td>
<td>Context only</td>
<td>High reliability for establishing the existence of a NASA conference publication where SEM-related papers could appear. Doesn’t contain the fern text itself on the record page. </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Symposium text copy (includes fern + STS-85 tie) </td>
<td>https://archive.org/stream/advancedSPACECRAFT/1999%20Shuttle%20Small%20Payloads%20Symposium%20_djvu.txt</td>
<td>“Resurrection Fern (Polypodium polypodioides) … sample flown on STS-85”</td>
<td>Substantive</td>
<td>Medium-to-high reliability as content, but it is not NASA-hosted. It likely reproduces NASA/CP-1999-209476 text (which NTRS lists), yet the provenance should be confirmed by obtaining the official NASA PDF pages. </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Secondary explainer repeating “zero gravity revival” (UF/IFAS Palmetto) </td>
<td>https://apirs.plants.ifas.ufl.edu/site/assets/files/371563/371563.pdf</td>
<td>“the resurrection fern can… recover in zero gravity”</td>
<td>Partial</td>
<td>Not NASA. Useful narrative corroboration and experiment description, but it’s secondary and may paraphrase NASA. Treat as support, not proof. </td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

Timeline and logic chain
NASA’s own flight and payload documentation makes the STS-85/Discovery/1997 + SEM microgravity student experiments part solid.  The missing piece is a NASA-hosted primary excerpt in which NASA explicitly says: “Polypodium (or Pleopeltis) polypodioides flew on Discovery in 1997 to observe rehydration/resurrection in microgravity.”
A compact timeline that matches the best-evidence interpretation:
<ul>
<li>1997-08-07 to 1997-08-19 — STS-85 flies on Discovery; NASA confirms SEM was part of the mission’s payload set (via TAS/SEM references). </li>
<li>1999 (published) — NASA conference publication NASA/CP-1999-209476 (“1999 Shuttle Small Payloads Symposium”) exists on NTRS. </li>
<li>Within a text copy of symposium proceedings — A “Resurrection Fern experiment” names Polypodium polypodioides and says the sample was flown on STS-85, describing a revival/resurrection monitoring approach consistent with “watching resurrection.” </li>
</ul>
If you want a visual flow of the evidence chain (and where it breaks):

Confirms STS-85/Discovery/Aug 7 1997

Confirms SEM = zero-/micro-g student experiments

No 'fern'/'Pleopeltis'/'polypodioides' found

Confirms SEM-02 = STS-85/Discovery/Aug 7 1997

Found only via symposium text copy

Claim: 1997 + Discovery + Pleopeltis polypodioides + observe resurrection in zero g

Check NASA STS-85 mission page

Mission/vehicle/date verified

Check NASA STS-85 press kit

Program context verified

No explicit fern statement in press kit

Check NASA NTRS SEM fact sheet

SEM flight linkage verified

Search for NASA primary naming fern

Polypodium polypodioides + STS-85 + 'resurrection' described

Need NASA-hosted PDF page quote to close loop

Show code

Conclusions and recommended next steps
Conclusions
<ul>
<li>Your exact quoted sentence is not directly supported by the NASA mission page or STS-85 press kit (i.e., those NASA sources do not explicitly say a resurrection fern flew). </li>
<li>A stronger, more defensible NASA-aligned statement is: “On STS-85 (Space Shuttle Discovery, launched Aug. 7, 1997), NASA’s Space Experiment Module (SEM) flew student-designed microgravity experiments; symposium documentation later describes a ‘Resurrection Fern (Polypodium polypodioides)’ SEM experiment flown on STS-85.” </li>
<li>Species-name nuance: If the event happened as described, NASA-era documentation likely used Polypodium polypodioides (older taxonomy) rather than Pleopeltis polypodioides (modern genus placement). </li>
<li>The “watch its resurrection in zero gravity” phrasing reads like a popular paraphrase. NASA sources usually say “microgravity,” and the STS-85 press kit uses “zero-gravity and micro-gravity” as program language, but none of the NASA primary documents checked explicitly tie that phrase to the fern. </li>
</ul>
Recommended next steps for airtight verification
<ul>
<li>Obtain the official NASA-hosted PDF pages from NASA/CP-1999-209476 (1999 Shuttle Small Payloads Symposium) and quote the relevant passage directly from NASA’s file (screen-captured pages if needed). NTRS confirms the record exists, but in this run the download link failed. </li>
<li>Search for a standalone NTRS entry for the specific “Resurrection Fern” SEM experiment paper, which may exist as an individual conference-paper PDF (separate document ID) even if the full proceedings PDF is hard to fetch. The author list in the text copy (students/teachers + CAN-DO project staff) provides search handles. </li>
<li>Cross-check STS-85 SEM experiment manifests (if accessible) via NASA payload integration archives (SSPP/Wallops historical pages referenced inside NASA’s SEM fact sheet and STS-85 press kit). </li>
<li>If you need a legally robust citation trail, contact the NASA STI / NTRS help channel or the relevant program office (SEM/SSPP at Wallops/GSFC is named in the SEM fact sheet) and request the official proceedings PDF or the specific experiment report. </li>
</ul>