Space Salad | God's World News
Space Salad
Take Apart SMART!
Posted: November 02, 2015

Chomp, chomp!

Astronauts Scott Kelly, Kjell Lindgren, and Kimiya Yui are making history . . . just by biting into a salad. This red romaine lettuce is the first food ever grown and eaten in outer space!

But wait a second. Space isn’t exactly the best place to grow houseplants. Without gravity, water won’t necessarily reach a plant’s roots. Instead it might ball up in a corner of the pot. Space doesn’t have fresh air either. Plants need fresh air to breathe. Besides all that, the astronauts live on the International Space Station. The Station zooms around the sun every 90 minutes. God made plants to follow the cycle of sun on Earth. The sunlight in space would just confuse a lettuce plant. So how did the astronauts do it?

Engineers on Earth invented something called the Veggie plant growth system. It took them years. Someone using the Veggie system would plant seeds in a pillow made of clay. Then they would add water. The design of the clay pillow allows water to fill it up without floating away. To replace wind, fans blow. Artificial lights act like little, earth-timed versions of the sun.

The astronauts grew the space salad over 33 days. When the lettuce ripened, it had large, healthy leaves. Each astronaut took a piece. Then they clicked their pieces together and said “cheers.” The verdict? The lettuce tastes way better than the usual freeze-dried space food!