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If all goes as planned, the International Space Station (ISS) is about to get a little spicier in November of this year.
The researchers hope to send Spanishola pepper plants (Capsicum annuum), which could make peppers the very first fruit grown in space by American astronauts.
"We were also looking for varieties that do not grow too high and yet are very productive in the controlled environments we would use in space," NASA plant physiologist Ray Wheeler told Dylan Bida. Rio Grande Sun.
"Astronauts have often expressed a desire to have spicier and tastier foods, and having a slightly spicy taste also seemed a good thing, and many peppers are very rich in vitamin C, which is important. for space regimes. "
Although there are thousands of types of chilli peppers, Española peppers have been chosen in part because they grow at high altitudes, have short growing periods and can be easily pollinated.
Astronauts and cosmonauts have successfully grown plants in space stations since 1982, when the Soviet spacecraft team Salyut 7 first grew the model factory. . Arabidopsis.
Russian cosmonauts have also been eating their own space products since 2003, but it was only in 2015 that American astronauts first tasted space lettuce.
We have now grown many space vegetables on the ISS, including lettuce, Swiss chard, radish, Chinese cabbage and peas.
It is important to note here that peas are botanically part of a fruit and that the Russians have cultivated it for years in the Russian segment of the ISS. However, no American astronaut has so far developed a fruit plant in space, which means that later this year, Española pepper could be the first.
Plants have a hard time growing in microgravity because their root systems are complex and generally use the gravity of the Earth to orient them.
But astronauts have managed to convince plants to develop aboard the ISS using special types of light and completing other techniques to help them determine the meaning "high" and "low" .
In 2018, a new, almost self-sustaining growth system called The Advanced Plant Habitat was sent to the ISS, joining the Vegetable Production System (Veggie) to help the crew grow fresh food.
All of this is important for NASA's ambitious plan to send humans to Mars. It takes us six months to a year to get to Mars, and once space pioneers are on the road, we can not easily get them more fresh food from the Earth.
It does not even mention their stay on the red planet and then the return trip. Cultivating one's own food is a very high priority.
"We can build all the rockets that we want to use on Mars, but that will not work if we do not have to eat," said Jacob Torres, a horticulture scientist at NASA, in Bida.
Researchers are working on a variety of crops in space, especially on a wide variety of nutrients and vitamins.
"We need to grow enough to supplement the diet," Torres told CNN. "Just like here on Earth, we can not live on the same thing."
"Imagine having a fresh pepper in which to bite after months of cardboard consumption," he added.
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