The discovery of an extraterrestrially harvested tomato has finally exonerated the famous astronaut accused of losing it, multiple outlets report. <\/p>\n
Yet details are glaringly sparse. <\/p>\n
Astronaut Frank Rubio set a United States record when he accomplished a 371-day space flight this September (beating the old record by 16 days). Along the way, he found the time to cultivate a bright red tomato and lose it, somewhere on board the International Space Station (ISS). <\/p>\n
NASA designated Rubios earthy mission the Veg-05 Experiment. Pick-and-Eat Salad-Crop Productivity in outer space was a focus. As part of it, the astronaut would grow a crop of tomatoes aboard the space station. <\/p>\n
He succeeded, in the form of at least one Red Robin dwarf tomato that he proudly harvested in 2022. <\/p>\n
To his dismay, he put it in a plastic baggie and promptly lost track of it. <\/p>\n
I put it in a little bag, and one of my crewmates was doing a (public) event with some schoolkids, and I thought itd be kind of cool to show the kids Hey guys this is the first tomato harvested in space, Rubio said during an October media event. I was pretty confident that I Velcroed it where I was supposed to Velcro itand then I came back and it was gone. <\/p>\n
Fresh food in space is not a light-duty topic among astronauts, who eat freeze-dried food out of technical necessity for their entire stay. As the mystery of the tomato lingered, popular opinion turned against Rubio. <\/p>\n
Unfortunately because thats just human nature a lot of people are like, He probably ate the tomato, Rubio told CNN. And I wanted to find it mostly so I could prove I did not eat the tomato. <\/p>\n
Rubio finally disembarked from his mission in late September, bound to reunite with his young family and happy in all appearances except for the tomato crisis. <\/p>\n
Then finally, a Dec. 6 news conference commemorating the ISSs 25th anniversary depressurized the situation. Several members of the ships remaining seven-person crew told international audiences that they had finally located the tomato. <\/p>\n
Rubio had been blamed for quite a while for eating the tomato, NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli said. But we can exonerate him. <\/p>\n
But the crew offered no further information on the tomatos whereabouts, condition, or other details. <\/p>\n
Rubio had previously offered the opinion that the tomato had shriveled and desiccated into an unrecognizable object. <\/p>\n
For his part, hes just happy to be home. His record space flight was an accident to begin with a forced delay due to a malfunctioning Russian shuttle craft. As of this writing, Rubio has not publicly commented on the discovery of the controversial tomato. <\/p>\n
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Originally posted here: <\/p>\n
Discovery of Space Tomato Relieves Record-Breaking Astronaut From Fracas Explorersweb - ExplorersWeb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The discovery of an extraterrestrially harvested tomato has finally exonerated the famous astronaut accused of losing it, multiple outlets report. Yet details are glaringly sparse Continue reading