The Lighter Side of Space:
Finish Your Vegetables, Or No Spacewalk!
By Tina Beychok
It's probably not hard to guess that food for astronauts can be rather boring. So what does a typical astronaut want after weeks of freeze-dried meal packets?
Salad greens.
According to Dr. Mark Kliss, a researcher at NASA's Ames Research Center, lettuce, cucumber and carrots are among the foods that astronauts crave the most. His latest research may make it possible for astronauts to add some healthy vegetables to their space diet. His working model of a "salad machine" is successfully growing its first zero-g crop, with some interesting results.
Because of limited space, plants grown in the "salad machine" will be smaller than on Earth. Tomatoes, for example, will be less than 12 inches high. Additionally, some of the plants Kliss is currently cultivating are growing sideways or upside down, due to the zero-g environment.
Kliss hopes that his machine will supply three salads per week for a crew of four. Eventually, Kliss hopes that some of that water the system uses may also be made potable for the astronauts.
However, in addition to the space constraints of only 28 cubic feet of growing volume, Kliss' grower must meet other challenges, including operating on less than a kilowatt of power and generating a minimal amount of waste heat.
Nevertheless, Kliss remains optimistic that one day, astronauts can happily get their daily fresh veggies. His current plan is to have a working machine ready for the launch of Space Station Freedom later this decade.
More info at: http://articles.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_pasa/is_/ai_2686877020.
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