Space Stations

Two Veggie Units Are Operating Aboard The International Space Station

By Keith Cowing
March 22, 2018
Filed under , ,
Two Veggie Units Are Operating Aboard The International Space Station
Plants inside ISS Veggie Unit
NASA

Crew aboard the International Space Station are now running two Veggie facilities simultaneously!

They have grown two batches of mixed greens, including mizuna, red romaine lettuce and tokyo bekana cabbage.

Organisms grow differently in space, from single-celled bacteria to plants and humans. But future long-duration space missions will require crew members to grow their own food, so understanding how plants respond to microgravity is an important step toward that goal. The Veg-03 experiment uses the Veggie plant growth facility to cultivate a type of cabbage, lettuce and mizuna which are harvested on-orbit with samples returned to Earth for testing.

Larger image

SpaceRef co-founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.