Russian Cosmonauts Grow Crops In Space
Researchers are announcing that Russian cosmonauts have successfully harvested several crops from on board the International Space Station (ISS), and they have been verified safe to eat, according to Russian news site RIA Novosti.
“The experiments with peas have been very promising,” Margarita Levinskikh, a researcher at the Institute of Biomedical Problems said during an annual space conference in Moscow.
The cosmonauts have grown a variety of crops, including peas, Japanese leafy greens, and a dwarf variety of wheat.
Levinskikh also said that next year Russian cosmonauts will be growing rice, tomatoes and bell peppers. Purple false brome will also be grown, because its genome has already been sequenced, so it can be checked for genetic abnormalities. However, they will first need to repair the Space Station’s Lada Greenhouse, which is a cooperative project involving both the Space Dynamics Laboratory at Utah State University and the Institute of Biomedical Problems.
Space-based agriculture is very interesting because plants can scrub exhaled carbon dioxide from the air. There is also discussion of recycling human waste into food.
As of now, all food is flown up to the International Space Station on regular resupply missions.
Stay tuned for more far out produce news.
RIA Novosti
Source of images: NASA.gov
