NASA astronauts will now have a
direct access to fresh food grown in the microgravity environment of
space in a microwave-sized box under LED lights. It isn't the first
time NASA tried to grow food on a space station, but it has made it
to the menu for the very first time.
NASA has been trying to grow lettuce on the orbiting laboratory since May 2014 in an experiment called Veg-01. Expedition-39 flight engineer Steve Swanson activated, watered, and cared for the first plants – which grow from seeds formed in what NASA calls pillows, in May 2014. After 33 days of growth, Swanson harvested the plants and sent them to Earth for food safety analysis in October 2014. Expedition 44 astronaut Scott Kelly activated the second Veg-01 plant pillows on July 8, 2015 and harvested the plants after 33 days of growth.
He harvested a crop of 'Outredgeous' red romaine lettuce and
astronauts onboard the International Space Station were to be the
first to taste it. The US space agency has confirmed that the lettuce
leaves are cleaned with citric acid-based, food safe sanitizing wipes
before they can be eaten. Half of the crop will be consumed and the
rest frozen for scientific analysis after they return to Earth.
It proved an extremely difficult
process to grow the first space salad. The biggest problem was to
control the astronauts' tools that would float around the spaceship.
It took a long time to make the space salad because the harvesting
had to be done scientifically.
The astronauts swabbed the plant with a Q-tip and then cut off half of each plant to provide scientists on Earth with something to analyze. It was grown aeroponically - in air without soil in the Veggie plant growth system originally developed by Orbital Technologies Corp. Plants grown this way require far less fertilizer and water and are much less prone to disease.
The basic purpose of growing food
on spaceships is to help supply astronauts when they are far from
Earth: a rational consideration given that it is not possible to
resupply when astronauts are on the way to Mars and back. NASA
believes self-sufficiency is extremely important for the success of
long-duration exploration missions.
he US space agency has plans to send astronauts to an asteroid by 2025 and to Mars in the 2030s, and they believe that Veggie will serve as a good resource of food for the spaceships crews. Astronauts may also use it for recreational gardening activities while they are on deep space missions. The idea of growing food on spacecraft will also pave way for finding techniques to grow food on other planets.
