Amy Schleunes, an intern at the Scientist newspaper, wrote an article about growing vegetables in space. This article was written the 9th of March 2020. NASA designed a vegetable production system, a sort of space vegetable garden called Veggie for astronauts.
A study published in “Frontiers in Plant Science” shows that lettuce can grow safely in weightless environments. The goal is to diversify astronauts diet. Gioia Massa, a plant scientist who works for the NASA said that the unique challenge was to watering plants in space properly. Veggie is not bulky and very convenient. It can contains up to 6 plants. A kind of little pillow contains fertilizer with clay, water and of course a seed.
The space lettuce is almost the same as Earth lettuce. NASA’s lettuces contain more phosphorus, sulphur, zinc, sodium, potassium and bacteria. The astronauts seems very happy to grow and eat fresh lettuce. The NASA thinks growing vegetables in spaceship could be very useful and vital for longer missions.
Here is the link of the article : https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/space-grown-lettuce-is-safe-and-astronaut-approved-67237
Jeremy P Blog 