The world will witness a historic moment Monday night as astronauts on the International Space Station eat, for the first time ever, space-grown romaine lettuce. Photographs beamed back to Earth show the harvested leafy vegetable, which they call Outredgeous red romaine lettuce, being prepped for the coming "feast."
The seemingly simple chore of growing the vegetable in space is considered a milestone because it establishes the possibility of astronauts having their own food source as they explore deep space. The goal is easier said than done considering the absence of gravity, space limitation and the lack of water in the space station. NASA had to create a specially-designed capsule called Veggie that would make it possible to achieve plant growth, HNGN earlier reported. The plants had to make do with LED lights instead of sunlight to help grow.
