<국제우주정거장(ISS)에서 키우고 있는 토마토와 식물을 키우고 있는 미 항공우주국 소속 우주비행사 프랭크 루비오. 사진=미 항공우주국>
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) found the ‘space tomato’ lost on the International Space Station (ISS) eight months later.
According to Space.com, an American aerospace media outlet, on the 6th (local time), Jasmine Mogbeli said in a live broadcast for the 25th anniversary of the ISS that she found the remains of tomatoes harvested in space in March after 8 months, saying, “Our friend Frank Rubio (NASA) “The astronaut’s name has been cleared,” he said.
NASA is conducting tests to grow several crops on the ISS’ Vegetable Production System (Veggie). ‘VEG-05’, a test for growing squat tomatoes with a diameter of about 2.5 cm, harvested on March 29th, is also part of this experiment.
The goal of VEG-05, which succeeded in harvesting after a total planning period of 100 days, was to investigate how light quality affects crops, while also examining crop growth, nutrient composition, microbial food safety, taste, and psychological effects on ISS crew members. The purpose is to check the benefits, etc.
However, one of the tomatoes in Rubio’s assigned Ziplock bag was missing, and the flight attendants joked that Rubio ate it because he could not bear the hunger. “We searched the inside of the ISS for nearly 18 to 20 hours, but we couldn’t find it,” Rubio said. In fact, it is larger than a 6-room ISS house, and because it is an environment with almost no gravity (microgravity), it is very difficult to find if you miss something.
That’s how Rubio lost his tomatoes and returned to Earth last September. Two weeks after his return, he was asked if he had found the missing tomato, and he said, “On the ISS, where the humidity is only 17%, that tomato would have dried and shriveled.”
Fortunately, the tomato he ‘spent so long looking for’ was found, and other crew members remaining on the ISS reported the happy news that “someone found the tomato they had been looking for for so long.”
<371일 만에 지구에 귀환한 우주비행사 프랭크 루비오. 사진=미 항공우주국/러 항공우주국>
Meanwhile, Rubio is the American astronaut who has stayed in space the longest. On September 27, he landed in the Zezkazan region of Kazakhstan on a Soyuz spacecraft along with Russian cosmonauts Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitry Petelin.
Rubio was originally scheduled to return to Earth on a Soyuz spacecraft at the end of March this year, but in December of last year, an unidentified object hit the spacecraft and a coolant leak occurred, making it impossible to return to Earth as planned. Subsequently, the new manned capsule Soyuz M-23 successfully docked and was able to return to Earth in about a year.
Electronic Newspaper Internet Reporter Seo Hee-won [email protected]
