According to Micro Finance Monitor, NASA has sent a lettuce plant to the International Space Station (ISS), so that astronauts can grow it on board and study the ability of the Vegetable Production System (Veggie) of growing salad-type crops in the ISS, which will provide the crew with a nutritious and safe source of fresh food.
Dr Gioia Massa, Nasa payload scientist for Veggie at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida said “If you can get the environmental conditions correct, there’s no reason why plants won’t grow pretty well in space”.
Growing such plant is part of Nasa’s Veg-01 experiment to study the in-orbit growth and development of lettuce seedlings in the spaceflight environment.
The experimented aboard the ISS was suggested after successfully growing crops of radishes and lettuce in a prototype test unit at the Kennedy’s Space Life Sciences Laboratory.
The Moroccan Times.
