Astronauts munch on space-grown lettuce

Amid a Russian spacewalk to carry out routine maintenance and inspections outside the International Space Station, two NASA astronauts and a Japanese crewmate staged a culinary first in orbit — harvesting and eating a few leaves of leafy, space-grown red romaine lettuce. Astronaut Scott Kelly later tweeted the snack represented “one small bite for man, one giant leap” for future flights to Mars. Floating in the European Space Agency’s Columbus laboratory module, Expedition 44 flight engineer Kjell Lindgren harvested the lettuce from its experiment enclosure, cleaned the leaves with a citric acid-based sanitizing solution and passed out samples to Kelly and Kimiya Yui. “Bon a petit,” Kelly quipped before taking a bite. A moment later, he reported “tastes good. Kind of like arugula.” More

(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Aug 12)