{"id":1212946,"date":"2023-12-16T13:26:01","date_gmt":"2023-12-16T18:26:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1212946"},"modified":"2023-12-16T13:26:01","modified_gmt":"2023-12-16T18:26:01","slug":"these-tomatoes-were-lost-on-the-international-space-station-for-almost-a-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1212946","title":{"rendered":"These tomatoes were lost on the International Space Station for almost a year"},"content":{"rendered":"

In an interview this fall following his return to Earth from the International Space Station, NASA astronaut Frank Rubio shared a little mission anecdote<\/a> that had us gripped: after he\u2019d harvested one of the first tomatoes grown in space and bagged it up for a presentation, the bag and its contents went missing. With no trace of the fruit, the other astronauts jokingly accused Rubio of eating it. Then, eight months later at the beginning of December, the lost tomato reappeared. A photo shared by NASA<\/a> now shows there were actually two tomatoes in the rogue sample \u2014 and, all things considered, they don\u2019t look half bad.<\/p>\n

While a tomato left to rot on Earth isn\u2019t a pleasant thing to come across, Rubio\u2019s tomatoes just look a bit dried out. \u201cOther than some discoloration, it had no visible microbial or fungal growth,\u201d NASA wrote in a blog post.<\/p>\n

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One small step for tomatoes, one giant leap for plant-kind. \ud83c\udf45<\/p>\n

Two rogue tomatoes were recovered after roaming on station for nearly a year. NASA Astronaut Frank Rubio accidentally lost the fruit while harvesting for XROOTS, a soil-less plant experiment. https:\/\/t.co\/ymAP24fxaX<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/AeIV8i6QKR<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 ISS Research (@ISS_Research) December 14, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

NASA has for years been experimenting with ways to grow food on the ISS and studying how the space environment affects plant growth. The red dwarf tomatoes were grown as part of a program called the eXposed Root On-Orbit Test System, or XROOTS, which uses a combination of hydroponic and aeroponic techniques instead of soil. Rubio, who was on the ISS for a record-breaking 371 days before his return in September 2023, harvested a batch of the tomatoes in March<\/a> to be sent back to Earth and examined for the VEG-05 study.<\/p>\n

As for the sample Rubio hung onto, which he intended to show to schoolkids in an event a crewmember had planned, the astronaut said the tomatoes simply disappeared. \u201cI was pretty confident that I Velcroed it where I was supposed to Velcro it, and then I came back and it was gone,\u201d he said. Rubio said he spent \u201ceight to 20 hours\u201d looking for it, to no avail. Now that they\u2019ve turned up (and since been thrown away), we\u2019re just dying to know where they were hiding all that time. We’ve reached out to NASA and will update this story if we find out any more information.<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https:\/\/www.engadget.com\/these-tomatoes-were-lost-on-the-international-space-station-for-almost-a-year-182601610.html?src=rss
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\nSource: Engadget – These tomatoes were lost on the International Space Station for almost a year<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In an interview this fall following his return to Earth from the International Space Station, NASA astronaut Frank Rubio shared a little mission anecdote that had us gripped: after he\u2019d harvested one of the first tomatoes grown in space and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[99,110],"tags":[98],"class_list":["post-1212946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-engadget","category-unfiltered-rss","tag-engadget"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1212946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1212946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1212946\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1212946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1212946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1212946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}