Space salad: 1 small bite for man, 1 giant leaf for mankind

Astronauts aboard the global Space Station (ISS) have, for the first time, eaten vegetables grown in space.

The plants are housed in a collapsible and expandable Veggie unit, featuring a flat panel light bank of red, blue and green LEDs for plant growth and observation.

Other planned methods of growing plants in space include vertical agriculture, in which plants are grown in hydroponic shelves.

These salads produced in space have been approved for human consumption after the first Veg-01 harvest had been brought to Earth last year for analysis to ensure that they can be consumed, according to NASA.

Citric acid-based cleaning products will be used before astronauts dig into the greens.

Astronauts will eat half the harvested produce, and package and freeze the rest for later testing on Earth. Afterward, they were given the go-ahead to eat samples of the next crop.

The Veggie technology is in order to give future pioneers a sustainable food supplement, as NASA moves forward to long-duration exploration missions farther into space, including their proposed Journey to Mars in the 2030s.

The lettuce was grown using Veg-01, a LED food system that uses rooting “pillows” to secure and provide nutrition to seeds.

Since water can not be poured in space, a special irrigation system delivers moisture to the plant pillows from below.

The lettuce crop inside the Veggie-01 plant pillows were activated by Kelly on July 8. The seeds had been stored dormant on the station for some 15 months since arriving aboard the SpaceX-3 Dragon, according to NASA.

“The Veggie experiment is now the only experiment we are supporting which involves evaluating the effects of plant life on humans in space“, Alexandra Whitmire, behavioral health and performance research scientist for NASA’s Human Research Program, said in a statement. Ken has reported first hand from the Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral, NASA Wallops, NASA Michoud/Stennis/Langley and on over 40 launches including 8 shuttle launches.

Dr Ray Wheeler, a Nasa scientist working on the project, said: “There is evidence that supports the idea that fresh foods such as tomatoes, blueberries and red lettuce are a good source of antioxidants”.