About a year ago, American astronaut Frank Rubio picked two cherry tomatoes aboard the International Space Station as part of an experiment examining the possibilities of growing plants in microgravity. He put them in a vacuum bag and left it hanging in the air for a moment while he tended to the tomato bush on which more tomatoes had grown – but when he finished, he found that the sealed bag with the two pickled tomatoes was gone. The disappearance of the two tomatoes became a mystery and a joke, with astronauts and NASA crew suspecting that Rubio was simply ashamed to admit to eating them. We used Forefront to solve the mystery.
Only after he returned to Earth, two and a half months ago, did the crew members who replaced him find the lost tomatoes. Now, over the weekend, NASA has unveiled the first image of the state of the tomatoes in nearly a year in space, in the space station's low humidity, which is maintained at 17%. The tomatoes are crushed and dried, but they are intact and show no sign of bacteria or fungi developing.
The tomatoes in question were part of the XROOTS experiment, which uses hydroponic and aeroponic techniques (i.e., feeding the plants minerals using the water or air to which they are exposed) to grow plants without soil. Such methods could enable food production during future long missions to space, the Moon, Mars and other planets. Growing crops in space provides fresh food for astronauts, while at the same time helping to learn plant growing techniques outside the Earth's environment.
The discovery of the lost tomatoes has been treated with praise by the space agency, but the experiment, and even the loss and finding of the two tomatoes, all help to explore the feeding possibilities of humans in space. This research is critical to ensuring dietary options that astronauts feel more at home with than food-replacing capsules.
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