Crew members and one-year astronaut Scott Kelly of NASA's Expedition 44, will harvest and partake on Monday a crop of "Outredgeous," the red romaine lettuce being grown in space.
While this is the second time that produce will be harvested from the Veggie plant growth system in space, eating it will be a first for the astronauts on the International Space Station. The approval to include the produce in the spacemen's menu came a year after the first crop of lettuce from Veg-01, the space gardening experiment, was grown and brought back to Earth for food safety analysis in October 2014.
This year, half of the space food will be consumed on board the laboratory in orbit, while the rest will be frozen and sent back to our planet for further analysis.
Dr. Ray Wheeler, who heads the Advanced Life Support activities in the Exploration Research and Technology Programs Office at Kennedy, affirms the experimental garden. "There is evidence that supports fresh foods, such as tomatoes, blueberries and red lettuce, are a good source of antioxidants. Having fresh food like these available in space could have a positive impact on people's moods and also could provide some protection against radiation in space," says Dr. Wheeler.
Dr. Gioia Massa, a NASA payload scientist for Veggie at Kennedy, added that there may be a psychological benefit to the program, aside from having the ability to grow and eat fresh food in space. He added that, "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. Studies have proven an association between plants and well-being." Massa also thinks that, "(t)he plant system will become important components of any long-duration exploration scenario."
Veg-01 uses a system developed by the Orbital Technologies Corporation. NASA, on the other hand, hopes that sustainable food sources will be provided by this particular technology to future deep space missions, as part of the government agency's Human Research Program for its Journey to Mars.
