Growing Veggies in Space

ORBITEC “grows” NASA business with two new awards

“Orbital Technologies Corporation, “ORBITEC,” has been awarded two new NASA contracts for engineering support and flight hardware production related to life science activities on the International Space Station. The programs awarded were for ORBITEC to support the development and flight of the “VEGGIE” system and the Advanced Plant Habitat at the NASA’s Kennedy Space Center for the space station. VEGGIE, an expandable and deployable vegetable system, was developed by ORBITEC to grow salad crops to supplement prepackaged foods during long stays in space. The primary goal of VEGGIE is to provide flight crews with palatable, nutritious, and safe sources of fresh food with minimal volume and operational resources. Significant, beneficial plant and life science experiments can also be conducted in the VEGGIE system. VEGGIE is designed as a very small module during flight stages and is later “unfolded” for growth operations.”