This “Outredgeous” red romaine lettuce grown on the orbiting laboratory will be made available to people aboard global Space Station after critical analysis by the members.
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The Veggie system is NASA’s first attempts to see whether it will be feasible for future deep space missions to grow and harvest vegetables grown in space so as to support the astronaut’s diet rather than shipping tonnes of food each time. “That’s awesome”, remarked Lindgren, while Kelly noted it tasted like arugula. Since water is hard to get and vital to life aboard the ISS, the lettuce will be cleaned using food sanitizing wipes.
NASA announced this week that astronauts aboard the worldwide Space Station are going to dine on the first fresh veggies grown in microgravity.
In 2014, an astronaut on NASA Expedition 39 grew and harvested the first plants from Veg-01 and then sent the plants back to earth for food safety analysis.
While half will be eaten by astronauts, the other half will reportedly be sent back to Earth for testing.
NASA astronauts at the global Space Station had a momentous-and fresh-lunch on Monday.
“The farther and longer humans go away from Earth, the greater the need to be able to grow plants for food, atmosphere recycling and psychological benefits”, Massa said.
Kelly said the seeds were planted on July 8 and took 33 days to grow. Named Veggie, the ISS’ plant growth program begins with rooting “pillows”, small bundles that contain the plant seeds.
Other planned methods of growing plants in space include vertical agriculture, in which plants are grown in hydroponic shelves. It uses efficient red and blue lights for the growth of the plants. “But the quantity is limited and must be consumed quickly”, says Dr. Gioia Massa, the NASA scientist working on the vegetable project at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.
“Plants potentially could serve as a countermeasure for long-duration exploration missions”.
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“Crew tastes red romaine lettuce with oil & vinegar for #NASAVeggie study and #JourneyToMars”, tweeted the global Space Station’s Twitter account.
