ISS crew takes first taste of lettuce grown in space farm
Meteorologist/Science Writer
Monday, August 10, 2015, 7:23 PM - While two Russian cosmonaut spent much of the day outside the International Space Station Monday, crew members inside the station enjoyed a tasty veggie snack that they grew themselves!
NASA TV hosted a live feed of a 6.5 hour repair and inspection spacewalk conducted by Cosmonauts Gennady Padalka and Mikhail Kornienko on Monday, as they worked outside the Russian modules of the space station. A short summary of the spacewalk is presented in the video above.
The various tasks Padalka and Kornienko have planned for this spacewalk include cleaning off one of the windows in the Russian section, photographing sections of the Russian modules for potential future maintenance, photographing biological samples that have been exposed to space, to see how these samples are progressing, and reorienting another experiment so that it may examine a different part of the space environment.
|
|
Additionally, they installed parts to correct one of the persistent problems of station operations. As the ISS orbits the planet, the consistent low-g environment has been causing communication antennas (known as WAL antennas) on the Russian modules to lose their protective covers as the forces on them force the screws holding the covers on to back out on their own and release the covers into space.
This problem was observed, rather dramatically, back in 2013, when then-station-commander Chris Hadfield reported seeing a "UFO" outside. It turned out to be one of the WAL covers that had popped off due to this same problem.
While installing parts to prevent the screws from backing out, they also jettisoned one of the WAL antennas that currently lacks a cover, and replaced the antenna with a new one. The specific trajectory of the jettisoned part has been plotted so that it will not become another piece of debris floating about the planet. Instead, it will soon burn up as a fireball high in the atmosphere.
Meanwhile, as Padalka and Kornienko were attending to this length spacewalk, the other crew members inside the station were enjoying the fruits - or should we say veggies - of their labours.
According to NASA:
The six astronauts currently living on the International Space Station (ISS) have become the first people to eat food grown in space. The fresh red romaine lettuce that accompanied the crew’s usual freeze-dried fare, however, is far from the first crop grown on a space station. For decades, NASA and other agencies have experimented with plants in space, but the results were always sent to Earth for examination, rather than eaten.
Produced by Orbital Technologies and NASA's Johnson Space Center, the Veggies system produced its first crop of lettuce on the space station, which the crew sampled today.
That's one small bite for a man, one giant leaf for mankind: Astronauts Scott Kelly, Kjell Lindgren and Kimiya Yui of Japan sample the fruits of their labor after harvesting a crop of "Outredgeous" red romaine lettuce from the Veggie plant growth system on the International Space Station. Video and caption courtesy: NASA.
