First salad, grown in space, eaten in the last month. Unable to bring up the NASA page though, sorry.
Veggie: salad on the space station
Recent space-gardening experiments on the ISS have taken place using a plant-growing system dubbed ‘Veggie’. As we’ve seen, while other experiments have been mainly concerned with examining plant physiology under different conditions, such as microgravity, Veggie is intended to produce food for astronauts.
Veggie consists of plant ‘pillows’ impregnated with seeds (which are sent to the ISS dry, and installed and hydrated in orbit), a root mat, and growth media consisting of calcined clay and controlled release fertiliser. Expandable plastic bellows form walls around the unit, and there’s a flat panel bank of LEDs at the top, which can be moved closer to or farther away from the plants. The Veggie units are collapsible, so they can be stored in a locker (taking up little space) until needed.
If you find it a stretch to wait for the final beep of the microwave before digging into some lunch, spare a thought for the ISS astronauts anticipating their first space-grown salad. The first Veggie unit was installed on the ISS in May 2014. A batch of lettuce was grown for 33 days, harvested, then returned to Earth to be tested for safety at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Having been determined to be safe to eat, a second batch was grown for 33 days and harvested. To be on the safe side, astronauts wiped their lettuce leaves with sanitising wipes before, finally, chowing down on ‘Outredgeous’ red romaine lettuce in August 2015. They ate half the produce, with the other half being packaged up, frozen and sent back to Earth for tests.
Next on the agenda for cultivation in Veggie was a flowering plant: zinnia. The choice of flowers wasn’t just to pretty up the place. Flowering plants take longer and are harder to grow than leaf crops (they’re more sensitive to variations in light, for example), and it was hoped that successfully growing zinnias would pave the way for growing other flowering plants on the ISS, such as tomatoes. The zinnias bloomed in January 2016 and were harvested on the ISS on Valentine’s Day 2016. A delivery of tomato seeds to the ISS is planned for 2017 or 2018.
More at
http://www.nova.org.au/space-time/plants-in-space
Veggie: salad on the space station
Recent space-gardening experiments on the ISS have taken place using a plant-growing system dubbed ‘Veggie’. As we’ve seen, while other experiments have been mainly concerned with examining plant physiology under different conditions, such as microgravity, Veggie is intended to produce food for astronauts.
Veggie consists of plant ‘pillows’ impregnated with seeds (which are sent to the ISS dry, and installed and hydrated in orbit), a root mat, and growth media consisting of calcined clay and controlled release fertiliser. Expandable plastic bellows form walls around the unit, and there’s a flat panel bank of LEDs at the top, which can be moved closer to or farther away from the plants. The Veggie units are collapsible, so they can be stored in a locker (taking up little space) until needed.
If you find it a stretch to wait for the final beep of the microwave before digging into some lunch, spare a thought for the ISS astronauts anticipating their first space-grown salad. The first Veggie unit was installed on the ISS in May 2014. A batch of lettuce was grown for 33 days, harvested, then returned to Earth to be tested for safety at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Having been determined to be safe to eat, a second batch was grown for 33 days and harvested. To be on the safe side, astronauts wiped their lettuce leaves with sanitising wipes before, finally, chowing down on ‘Outredgeous’ red romaine lettuce in August 2015. They ate half the produce, with the other half being packaged up, frozen and sent back to Earth for tests.
Next on the agenda for cultivation in Veggie was a flowering plant: zinnia. The choice of flowers wasn’t just to pretty up the place. Flowering plants take longer and are harder to grow than leaf crops (they’re more sensitive to variations in light, for example), and it was hoped that successfully growing zinnias would pave the way for growing other flowering plants on the ISS, such as tomatoes. The zinnias bloomed in January 2016 and were harvested on the ISS on Valentine’s Day 2016. A delivery of tomato seeds to the ISS is planned for 2017 or 2018.
More at
http://www.nova.org.au/space-time/plants-in-space
