On Friday NASA took to their blog to let everyone know that crew members of Expedition 44 would be eating food grown that was grown in space on August 13.
Space Food
As odd as eating space food might sound, this is represents significant progress towards helping NASA better equip its astronauts during long-duration space mission. Mars is a three month trip away, and that doesn’t include time spent studying the planet or the return trip. What this means is that researchers need to find a way to sustain food supplies while crews would be away for such a lengthy time.
The Expedition 44 crew, which includes NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, will be sampling red romaine lettuce from the “veggie plant” growth system on the International Space Station (ISS). They will consume half of the harvested lettuce, while packaging the other half to be sent back to Earth for proper study and research.
NASA believes that having fresh foods available to crew will have a variety of benefits.
“Having fresh food like these available in space could have a positive impact on people’s moods and also could provide some protection against radiation in space,” said Dr. Ray Wheeler, head of NASA’s Advanced Life Support at Kennedy Space Centre.
NASA’s Sustainable Food Project is Called Veg-01
In the initial experiment, NASA used the Veg-01 to study how naturally grown veggies would work in orbit. Planting the seeds in “pillows”, the scientists then began to study the performance of the plant growth facility back in May 2014.
Expedition 39 was the first crew to activate the pillows and begin to care for them, with flight engineer Steve Swanson being the main person in charge of the project.
In October 2014, the plants were harvested and transported back to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center so the plants could be studied due to safety concerns.
A second batch of pillows were flown back to the ISS, and were activated 15 months later in July 2015. This is the batch of plants that will be harvested and consumed by astronauts aboard the ISS before being flown back down to Earth to be further studied.
Reaping the Benefits
Alexandra Whitmire, a Behavioral Health and Performance Research scientist for NASA, believes that having fresh vegetables aboard future space missions will have psychological benefits in addition to nutritional benefits. Whitmire is involved with studying the possible psychological risks that might be involved on a mission to Mars.
Dr. Gioia Massa, a NASA payload scientist, supports Whitmire’s idea.
“Besides having the ability to grow and eat fresh food in space, there also may be a psychological benefit,” said Massa.
What types of psychological benefits fresh food may have on astronauts isn’t quite clear yet, but NASA will be continuing to learn more about the project as its plans for a manned mission to Mars becomes closer to a reality.
UNTIL SPACE FOOD TAKES, TRY TRAINING YOUR DIET
Space Gardening: NASA"s Plan for Sustainable Food
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