“Tomato missing for 8 months in orbital laboratory” found” Gizmodo reported, “astronaut Frank Rubio has been absolved of the playful suspicion that he ate it.”
NASA’s Veg-05 experimentIn an unusual turn of events, Red Robin’s dwarf tomatoes, a project focused on growing fruits and vegetables in space, disappeared shortly after they were harvested in March. NASA astronaut Jasmine Moghbeli said in a press conference that the tomato was finally discovered as part of research exploring the feasibility of continuous fresh food production in space. live stream On December 6th…
The Veg-05 project expanded the scope of farming in space to include dwarf tomatoes, investigating how changes in lighting and fertilizers affect fruit growth, safety, and nutritional value ( And yes, tomato is a fruit, not a vegetable)… After the March harvest, each astronaut received a sample of tomatoes stored in a Ziploc bag. However, due to concerns about possible fungal contamination, NASA has instructed astronauts not to consume the fruit, Space.com reports. report.
News of the missing tomatoes first came to light at an event on September 13th. To commemorate Rubio’s one-year stay in orbit. Rubio, whose mission on the ISS was extended due to a failure of Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft, lamented that his share of the tomatoes flew away before he could eat them. Rubio, who spent a record 371 days in space, reflected on the missing tomato, saying, “I spent hours looking for it. One day, a dried tomato showed up, and for years it remained… He will prove me right.” future. ”
“We did not say where on the 356-foot-tall space station the 1-inch-wide Red Dwarf Tomato was located,” Moghbeli said during the livestream. The Guardian points out that“or in what state.”
According to NASA, Rubio tomatoes were one of only 12 red dwarfs to successfully germinate and grow to full ripeness in space during the Veg-05 mission, compared to more than 100 in parallel experiments on Earth. It turned out to be one of them.
Thanks to Slashdot reader christoban for sharing the news.