Amateur Radio Buff Makes Contact With global Space Station

Nasa astronauts have been growing lettuce in space, as the first-ever space-grown fruit and veg is about to be harvested on the global Space Station.

In 2010, NASA proposed a plant to Congress which would allow us to stop relying on the Russian space program in five years. In fact, there’s an entire page dedicated to contacting the ISS – according to the Amateur Radio on the worldwide Space Station website, “Some ISS crew members make random, unscheduled, amateur radio voice contacts with earth-bound radio amateurs, often called “hams.'” More surprising still, the ISS has apparently made thousands of similar phone calls, with the only real limiting factor being the astronauts” work schedules and, you know, the availability of signal.

“There is evidence that supports fresh foods, such as tomatoes, blueberries and red lettuce are a good source of antioxidants”.

They will clean the greens with citric acid-based, food-safe sanitizing wipes before consuming them.

“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“, said Dr. Ray Wheeler, head of NASA’s Advanced Life Support at Kennedy Space Centre. They will eat just half the vegetables and freeze the other half to be sent to Earth for additional experiments. Fresh food, such as vegetables, provide essential vitamins and nutrients that will help enable sustainable deep space pioneering.

A second batch of pillows were flown back to the ISS, and were activated 15 months later in July 2015.

Last April 2014, the Veggie system and two sets of pillows that contain romaine seeds and zinnias were delivered to the space station during the third cargo resupply mission from SpaceX.

The unit used to grow the vegetables has a flat-panel light bank that uses red, blue, and green LEDs for plant growth and observation. The rest is to be packaged, frozen and returned to Earth for analysis.

“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”, she said.