WASHINGTON: The scientists grew a crop on the orbiting laboratory which will be made available for humans aboard the International Space Station to taste after some experimentation. The crop yielded is known as “Outredgeous” red romaine lettuce which will be nurtured for 33 days by the six international crew members before consuming it.
The astronauts will eat half of the bounty after proper disinfection with wipes and citric acid and the other half will be preserved for further examination on Earth and to study the in-orbit function and performance of plant growth facility.
NASA conducted this experiment called “Veg-01” and according to the reports, the first pillows were looked after by Expedition 39 (May 2014) and analysed in October last year. The present second batch was activated by Scott Kelly (July 8) and will be sent to Earth for safety analysis at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Orbital Technologies Corp. (ORBITEC) (Madison, Wisconsin) developed this Veggie system and was supplied with sets of pillows by SpaceX in April 2014. This system is well equipped with red, blue and green LEDs to support plant growth.
In 2010 and 2011, careful testing for this experiment in space was done at NASA’s desert site in the Habitat Demonstration Unit, Arizona.
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