NASA Astronaut Harvested And Snacked On The Lettuce Grown In ISS For The First Time

As scientists are preparing for a longer travel of the astronauts, they find ways on how the astronauts could pack food that is not that space consuming. One way is to grow their own food. Now they are growing lettuce in the outer space.

NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough cut some of the "Outredgeous" Red Romaine lettuce leaves for his mid-afternoon snack. He nurtured the lettuce leaves during the past month aboard the International Space Station as part of their gardening harvest technique called "cut-and-come-again."

For the first time, NASA reported that all of the six lettuce plants are growing in space. Kimbrough cultured the lettuce and it is the most recent batch. He was the one doing the part-time role as an orbit gardener. He was working virtually and cultivating the crops with the help of the ground gardeners at the Kennedy Space Center that helped him since the beginning.

Veggie Project Manager Nicole Dufour said that "During their first week of life, the small seedlings were getting too much water. This puts the plants' growth a bit behind schedule, but they recovered nicely after we instructed Kimbrough to use a fan to dry up some of the moisture."

The cut-and-come-again technique is a repetitive harvest, in which a selection of leaves can be harvested for a bit of the fresh lettuce and the experts are looking at the possibility to use it as a sample for science.

As for the remaining leaves and the plant's core, it is left intact and expected to grow and produce more leaves for the following harvest that is more or less 10 days. The goal is to increase the crop yield in orbit. Also, it would be the opportunity to add supplements and fresh food in the astronaut's diet.

Dufour added that "Testing this method on-orbit, after using it on the ground, is very exciting for us. A repetitive harvest allows us to provide more food for both the crew and for science, so it's a win-win. We are looking forward to hearing how Shane enjoys his first harvest!"

The goal now is to have four harvests in total. The first harvest will be exclusively for the consumption of the crew. The target for the final harvest would be in the new year. It will be then divided into the crew consumption and samples for science.

The NASA's Space Life and Physical Sciences Research and Applications funded this research. It is important how NASA applies science across disciplines -- in this case, Space Biology to grow a healthy crop and human research to ensure astronauts remain healthy -- to enable human space exploration, according to Space Daily.