Lettuces grown in space are safe for health and as nutritious as those on Earth

• In the greenhouse.The first tasting of space lettuce
• Space. Why do you want to go to Mars?
• ISS. An espresso coffee in space

The first lettuces grown in the International Space Station (ISS) were welcomed with expectation and curiosity by astronauts. In the first tasting, Scott Kelly, Kjell Lindgren and Kimiya Yui assured with some surprise that "it was good" and that its flavor reminded them of the arugula.

After dressing it with a little oil and vinegar, they ate only a little because it was necessary to make sure that those lettuces grown between 2014 and 201 6 in a futuristic greenhouse and striking fuchsia lighting called Veggie were edible and did not pose a health risk.

After passing them through the laboratory, scientists from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida have confirmed that, in effect, the consumption of the Outredgeous romaine lettuce variety that grew in an environment of zero gravity is not only edible, but has as many nutrients as lettuce that are grown on Earth in a normal environment.

"The ability to grow food with a sustainable system that is safe for the crew will be critical as NASA does longer missions. This type of lettuce can grow with few resources, " said Christina Khodadad, a researcher at Kennedy Space Center and co-author of this study published in Frontiers in Plant Science .

And, although talking about growing vegetables in space may seem trivial, the production of fresh food will be important in future long-term missions, such as a trip to Mars, no longer from the nutritional point of view as the quality, variety and The taste of packaged food consumed in space has greatly improved, but also from the psychological point of view.

No dangerous bacteria

The Vegetable Production Systems greenhouse, dubbed Veggie , is equipped with LED lighting and a irrigation system specially designed to house plants that grow in space conditions of zero gravity. During the experiments, the lettuces remained in the machine for 33 to 56 days. The astronauts ate a part of the vegetables, the rest was frozen and transferred to Earth for chemical and biological analysis.

The scientists repeated the same experiment on Earth, replicating in the laboratories of the Kennedy Space Center the same conditions of temperature, carbon dioxide and humidity that were recorded in the ISS. Thus, they verified that the composition of space lettuce was the same as those that had been grown on Earth, except in some trials in which the ISS vegetables were richer in elements such as potassium, sodium, phosphorus, sulfur and zinc , in addition to phenolic compounds, molecules with inflammatory, antiviral and anticancer activity.

They also examined the presence of microorganisms, identifying 15, but no bacteria linked to human diseases. For example, none of the lettuces were the famous E. coli, Salmonella or S. aureus .

Now that they know that the intake of these lettuces is safe, Gioia Massa, a Kennedy Space Center scientist, advances that the next step will be to grow other vegetables such as peppers and tomatoes to get a richer and more varied diet for astronauts.

As Massa explains to El Mundo through an email, 'Veggie' is still in the ISS, in the module 'Columbus': "In 2017 we added a second unit 'Veggie' to continue growing and testing other types of leafy vegetables" .

After the summer, he adds, some members of his team will start growing peppers in the so-called Advanced Planta Habitat (APH), another facility for plants that they have in the ISS: "And we hope to grow cherry tomatoes next year. As we develop methodologies we will be adding more crops. "

In each 'Veggie' unit there is room for six plants to grow at once : "For a mission to Mars, we will probably develop a different system from the lessons we are learning from 'Veggie' and APH. We hope to be able to there are enough vegetables so they can be a complement to the packaged food during the entire trip to Mars. "

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

• Science and Health
• science

Climate crisis The month of January was the warmest in the last 141 years

Science Discover for the first time a powerful radio signal from another galaxy that repeats every 16 days

Science NASA shows how pollution has been reduced in China by the coronavirus