Back in 2013, we were telling you about about a small agricultural project on the International Space Station – now, the space veggies are ready to be harvested and enjoyed; for the first time, astronauts will be eating food grown in space. 
 
 Everything that’s done on the ISS is done for a reason, or several reasons. NASA’s plant experiment, called Veg-01, will not only provide fresh food for astronauts, but it will reveal how space-grown food fares compared to regular food and what impact (physical and psychological) it has on astronauts. 
 
 “There is evidence that supports fresh foods, such as tomatoes, blueberries and red lettuce are a good source of antioxidants,” said Ray Wheeler, lead for Advanced Life Support activities in the Exploration Research and Technology Programs Office at Kennedy. 
 
 Furthermore, the possibility of growing food in outer space raises some interesting possibilities, especially for long-term space expeditions. 
 
 “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.” 
 
 For starters, if the project is successful, then astronauts on the ISS would need less supplies shipped from Earth – they could grow some of their own food, although space is a very valuable resource… in space. But further down the line, this brings new prospects for NASA’s manned Journey to Mars program, scheduled to take place in the 2030s, in which people would spend over a year in space on their way to Mars. We won’t be able to send any supplies from Earth, and grown food would help not only logistically, but also with the mental health of the astronauts – eating familiar food is always nice. 
 
 “The farther and longer humans go away from Earth, the greater the need to be able to grow plants for food, atmosphere recycling and psychological benefits. I think that plant systems will become important components of any long-duration exploration scenario,” said NASA payload scientist Gioia Massa. 
 
 All in all, if we want to do some long term space travel, we have to grow space food, so it’s pretty surprising that we only just recently started researching this. 
 
 “The Veggie experiment is currently the only experiment we are supporting which involves evaluating the effects of plant life on humans in space,” explained Alexandra Whitmire, behavioural health and performance research scientist for NASA’s Human Research Program. “Future spaceflight missions could involve four to six crew members living in a confined space for an extended period of time, with limited communication. We recognise it will be important to provide training that will be effective and equip the crew with adequate countermeasures during their mission.” 
 
 But growing food in outer space is not like doing so down on Earth. Astronauts must grow the plant in rooting “pillows” containing the seeds because there’s no gravity. Also, you need some artificial light – in this case, they use a flat panel that gives off red, blue and green lights using LEDs. All these facilities exist in the Lada greenhouse that has been aboard the ISS since 2002 and has been used to study plant growth in microgravity. 
 
 Until now though, none of the plants was eaten, but that’s about to change. Tonight’s menu includes red romaine lettuce; they will eat a part of it, and save the rest for experiments. For now, studies will focus on actually growing the food and studying its nutritious value, but soon, scientists will work on ways to increase crop yield. 
 
 “We hope to increase the amount and type of crop in the future, and this will allow us to learn more about growing plants in microgravity. We have upcoming experiments that will look at the impacts of light quality on crop yield, nutrition and flavour, both on Earth and in space.” 
 
 Enjoyed this article? Join 40,000+ subscribers to the ZME Science newsletter. Subscribe now! ||||| SHARE THIS ARTICLE Share Tweet Post Email 
 
 NASA NASA 
 
 It’s been a rough year for the people who keep the International Space Station (ISS) working. In June, Space X’s Falcon 9 rocket disintegrated less than three minutes after launching from Cape Canaveral, Fla., sending a cargo capsule plummeting into the Atlantic Ocean. The failure followed the October 2014 explosion of an Orbital Sciences rocket on a launchpad at the Wallops Flight Facility on Virginia’s Eastern Shore. In April, a Russian Progress cargo ship carrying three tons of supplies spun out of control in orbit and was destroyed as it fell back to Earth. 
 
 Both of the U.S. resupply vessels carried water-processing equipment needed on the station. Their failure to reach outer space raised the stakes for the Aug. 19 launch of an unmanned Japanese cargo craft, the Kounotori 5, or White Stork, which successfully docked on Monday. “Once it gets up to the space station, my life gets a whole lot better,” says Layne Carter, the water subsystem manager for the ISS at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center near Huntsville, Ala. 
 
 Among the cargo losses on both U.S. launch failures were a pair of multifiltration beds for the water processor and filters for the urine-processing system, which recycles astronauts’ waste into a drinking supply. “It tastes like bottled water,” Carter says of the water that emanates from the urine processing system, “as long as you can psychologically get past the point that it’s recycled urine and condensate that comes out of the air.” (Condensate is a polite way of describing the collected breath and sweat of crew members, as well as shower runoff and urine from animals aboard the ISS, including a dozen mice that arrived on the Japanese supply mission.) Without the spares, Carter’s team was forced to stop processing condensate for water in mid-July and engineered further ad hoc backup plans to keep the water running in case something went awry. “There’s always an adventure right around the corner with the water system,” says Carter, a 27-year NASA veteran. 
 
 The space station carries roughly 2,000 liters of water in reserve for emergencies, split about evenly between the U.S. and the Russian sections of the ISS. The two sides operate separate water systems mainly because of decades-old decisions on how best to disinfect water. When the space shuttle program began in 1981, its astronauts’ water relied on iodine, a common biocide for water that had long served as a staple for U.S. troops operating in areas with suspect water supplies. Those standard practices carried over to the American side of the space station, which was launched in 1998. It’s an effective but inefficient way to clean the water supply, because it has to be filtered out before crew members can drink it. Too much iodine can cause the thyroid gland to become enlarged. 
 
 The Russians, however, rely on a different go-to: silver, which in its ionic form is a powerful antimicrobial agent. Its use dates back to the Soviet Mir space station, which was launched in 1986. Unlike iodine, silver doesn’t have to be filtered out of the water. Epsom salts are added to improve its taste. NASA has decided to switch to silver-ionized water on future missions, but Carter says he likes that there’s both silver- and iodine-treated water aboard the ISS: “It really makes a lot of sense," he says, "to have dissimilar redundancies in the space station in case one of the systems has problems.” 
 
 The U.S. water recycling system produces about 3.6 gallons per day, for an average of three NASA crew on the ISS, slightly more than the Russians yield from processing just condensate and shower water into a potable supply. The reason? NASA takes Russian urine, too. “We collect it in bags, and then the crew hauls it over to the U.S. side,” Carter says. “We don’t do 100 percent of the Russian urine. It depends on our time availability.”
– In May, the first fresh cup of coffee was brewed on the International Space Station. Today, ISS astronauts will enjoy another fresh debut: a meal made with the first food grown in outer space. On the menu will be a salad made out of microgravity-grown romaine lettuce, washed with a citric acid sanitizer before the dinner bell, Sky News reports. Half of the lettuce will be devoured by the crew, while the other half will head back to Earth so scientists on the ground can check it out. Growing the red lettuce—nicknamed OutREDgeous by NASA scientists—was no small feat, the Escapist notes: When there's zero gravity, water doesn't seep into the soil, dirt can just float away, there's limited sunlight, and the roots don't know which way to grow since there's no traditional "up" or "down." The astronauts overcame these challenges by packing special "pillows" with soil, seeds, and stakes to help guide root and plant growth, per the Escapist; the pillows were then placed underneath blue, red, and green LED lights—the green light to turn the romaine the dark-red color that people are accustomed to, Sky notes (check out the NASA video that further explains the process). There are some fringe benefits from space-garden fare other than a delicious meal: A NASA behavioral health scientist tells Sky that gardening could help astronauts cut their stress levels, while a Kennedy Space Center scientist says that "having fresh food … in space could have a positive impact on people's moods and also could provide some protection against radiation," per ZME Science. (Maybe we could even make tires out of the space lettuce.)