NASA is sendinga really coolheaded garden to the International Space StationonApril 14 , on control board the SpaceX Dragon . For the first time in history , astronauts will grow their own food in blank using this slap-up disco box , an important step towards next long - term quad travel and extraterrestrial colony . Incidentally , this must be big to cultivate grass .
Outredgeous flushed romaine lettuce lettuce works uprise inside a prototype Vegetable Production System ( Veggie ) . Veggie will grow secure , refreshed plants for food and provide amateur activity to crew aboard the International Space Station .
Until now , all plant growth in space has been limited and gear towards scientific experiment , not actual nutrient production for astronauts .
Veggie — as the gadget is know — will provide a way to arise fresh green groceries in 28 24-hour interval . According to Gioia Massaa postdoctoral fellow in the Surface Systems Group of Kennedy ’s Engineering Directorate — Veggie can also provide with other vegetables :
Veggie could be used to produce faster - grow species of flora , such as lettuce or Raphanus sativus longipinnatus , bok choy or Chinese cabbage , or even bitter leafy greens . Crops like tomato , peas or dome in which you ’d have to have a flower and set yield would take a short longer than a 28 - twenty-four hours cycle .
The experiment may seem inconsequential but it ’s not . Astronauts do n’t often get sweet food and — when they get it—”it gets eaten almost immediately . ” This box will give them a steady supply of sweet veg with minimal vim and imagination usage . It ’s far from the full garden that science - fiction author imagine in large stations and starship , but it ’s a first step in that focusing . It will also pave the means to solid food production in future Mars and Moon colonies .
This work will emphasize the nidus on human habitableness in space , since uprise food in space may greatly improve long - continuance space travel . Veggie can endure a salmagundi of studies used to determine how plants sense and respond to gravity . cosmonaut will reap the plants for further investigation . With continued plant increase sketch aboard the space post using facilities like Veggie , crews may one twenty-four hours use up raise during long - term missions in depressed - Earth orbit or to an asteroid or Mars .
Little step by little step , but we are getting there .
Space
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