ABOVE: NASA astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor tends to dragoon lettuce and red Russian kale plants in the Veggie growing system during Expedition 57 in the fall of 2018.
NASA
Lettuce can be safely grown in space using a unique system for plant cultivation in weightless environments, according to a study published on March 6 in Frontiers in Plant Science. The growing system was designed by NASA scientists with the goal of improving astronauts’ traditional diet of dehydrated meats, freeze-dried ice cream, and other processed foods that degrade and become less nutritious over time, according to The Guardian.
Veggie, as the system is called, addresses the unique challenges of watering plants in space “where we can get too much water or not enough water,” coauthor Gioia Massa, a plant scientist at the NASA Kennedy Space Center in Florida, tells The New York Times. “Water coats your surfaces. It will clog the pores of ...
