The mysterious tomato that appeared on board the International Space Station took us by surprise, 8 months after it was taken for granted

Life on the International Space Station (ISS) is not easy. Thousands of kilometers away from their families and in such a difficult physical environment, astronauts face a lot of pressure while working on hundreds of experiments. Even more so when failure prevents them from returning home on time. but, There’s also time for some humor. In the midst of celebrating the station’s 25th anniversary, they acquitted one of the astronauts who lived there the longest because he ate a wasted tomato.

Salvadoran astronaut Frank Rubio returned to Earth without being able to complete a strange mission. Finding lost tomatoes on the International Space Station. The crew joked for months that Rubio himself ate it before saying it was lost, but it’s now known that he was telling the truth.

NASA astronaut Jasmine Moghbeli said: “Our friend Frank Rubio, who has already returned home, has been blamed for some time because he ate tomatoes. But we can exonerate him. We have found the tomatoes.” During a live-streamed event On Wednesday, December 6, the agency celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of the establishment of the International Space Station.

These tomatoes, which grow in weightlessness, are exploring new ways to create extraterrestrial plants as a means of feeding future extraterrestrial colonies, as well as improving crops on Earth. It’s kind of Red Robin dwarf tomato, 2.5 cm tall, is part of the Veg-05 trial Which Rubio took care of himself for a while.

This harvest was not without problems that endangered its development. Sensors that regulate temperature, humidity and carbon dioxide in laboratories Microgravity failed and there was a drop in humidity Which lasts for several days and affects the tomato plant.

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After one of the harvests in March 2023, B.CTomato samples were distributed to the crew wrapped in Ziploc bags.But Rubio lost his briefcase. The astronaut spent months joking about the number of hours he devoted to searching for evidence of his innocence. However, the dimensions of the space station made it difficult.

“The reality of the problem is, you know, the humidity there is up to 17%. Maybe it’s so dry that you can’t tell what it is.“Someone threw it in the bag,” Rubio explained upon returning home. “I hope someday someone finds it: a little wrinkled thing.”

This is what happened, months later, and the joke ended, even though they did not show a picture of the condition in which the tomatoes were found. A funny anecdote from one of the most complicated stays of an astronaut on the station. Rubio was one of those who spent the most time there, longer than expected due to the failure of the Soyuz spacecraft. This forced Russia to send a rescue mission to safely return several astronauts, including Rubio, who… He spent 371 consecutive days in space.

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