Adaptogens for astronauts

China Central Television has produced a short video showing the plant experiments growing on the Tiangong space station. The Shenzhou-16 crew has been in orbit for almost three months, and says their space vegetable garden has given a good lettuce harvest.

Not everyone has a backyard appropriate for a large garden, but almost everyone can keep a container plant. Size is only one of the many advantages of growing plants in containers rather than in the ground. This only works well, however, if you select plants that are happy living in a pot. Gardeners in the West have many choices. Read on for some top options for California or Nevada container gardening.

Header image: Mizuna lettuce growing aboard the International Space Station before being harvested and frozen for return to Earth. Image credit: NASA 

It’s hard to imagine anyone being more excited about eating lettuce than the three astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) were yesterday, when they tucked into the first leaves of space-grown lettuce they’ve been allowed to eat. Despite having to sanitise the leaves first, with citric-acid-based, food-safe, antibacterial wipes (yummy!), they broke out the oil and vinegar and tucked in with gusto. They even thanked Mission Control and the scientists for giving them the opportunity to take part in this payload mission, and saved some veggies for the Russian cosmonauts who were outside on a spacewalk at harvest time.

Header image: Tokyo Bekana Chinese cabbage leaves prior to harvest aboard the International Space Station. Photo credit: NASA

Header image: The prototype space greenhouse developed by the TIME SCALE project showed that it is possible to recycle nutrients and water to grow food. Image credit – Karoliussen

In Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars, Kate Greene talks about Shannon Lucid, the NASA astronaut who spent six months living on the Russian space station Mir. Shannon, it turns out, was a bookworm. During her stay, she read 50 books and improvised shelving from old food boxes, complete with straps to stop the books floating off. This was in 1996, a good decade before the invention of the Kindle, and so these were real books. She apparently chose titles with the highest word to mass ratio, since launch weight is a critical factor! Lucid left her library behind for future spacefarers, but it burned up when Mir was de-orbited in 2001.

Header image: What makes more sense: Sending a human or a robot to Mars? Credit: Juergen Faelchle/Shutterstock.com

Header image: Chinese astronauts Tang Hongbo, Nie Haisheng, and Liu Boming during ceremony before heading to Tiangong. ROMAN PILIPEY/EPA

Matt Damon as astronaut and exobotanist Mark Watney in the film The Martian grows crops on Mars. (20th Century Fox/Handout)

What kind of traveller are you? Do you prefer to lie in a hammock slung between two palm trees, reading the latest blockbuster novel? Or would I find you soaking up the local culture along with the sun? I’m more of the latter, and it helps to know a smattering of the local language if you go off the beaten track!

When NASA is selecting crops to grow in space, it looks for varieties that can produce a lot of food in a small space, on compact plants that are healthy and easy-to-grow. It turns out that they suitable tomato plants already exist on Earth, as there are plenty of windowsill and small-space gardeners who love tiny tomatoes!