astronaut residents International Space Station (ISS) began this week to taste their own lettuce, fresh and crunchy vegetable that planted and harvested in the garden space .
This is possible thanks to so-called “Veg-01″ or “Veggie” microgravity a system that works like a garden.
The project aims to investigate how they could achieve growing food for future extended missions.
This “farm” registered its first crop a year ago, but astronauts not tested, but a sample collected before the They froze and sent to Earth for analysis. At that time, the biggest concern was that might contain harmful bacteria for people.
After evaluation in terrestrial laboratories, microbiologists found that the lettuce had very similar spatial microbes the other group of lettuce harvested here on the planet as a “control group”.
In addition, as expected, it was found that the food was free of chemicals.
satisfaction astronauts, was also observed containing no pathogens or other contaminants.
Gioia Massa, project leader at the space agency NASA , said the portal New Scientist that “vegetables are cleaner than any you would find in a supermarket.”
Requirements for consumption? Massa said that only cleaned with disinfectant wipes. “The last thing you would ever want in space is food poisoning,” joked Massa.
The researcher acknowledged that one of the main challenges was to see how changing the texture of the plants when they had to fight the gravity. “At the time, we believed that they would not be as crisp as those on Earth, but it seems they are almost the same,” he added.
Only half of the lettuce can be eaten by astronauts. The other half will be sent to Earth for further analysis and experiments.
Next on the list of foods to plant are tomatoes and dwarf peppers.
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