A 9-month-old space mystery has finally been solved, as the remains of a tiny tomato harvested in space and subsequently lost by NASA astronaut Frank Rubio was finally found aboard the International Space Station (ISS).
Rubio admitted misplacing one of the first tomatoes ever grown in space – but many said he ate it.
CNN reported:
“’I put it in a little bag, and one of my crewmates was doing a (public) event with some schoolkids, and I thought it’d 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 it … and then I came back and it was gone’.
In the microgravity environment of space, anything not anchored to a wall is at risk of floating away — destined to spend eternity hidden behind a nook or cranny within the football field-size orbiting laboratory and its labyrinthian passageways.”
Rubio reportedly spent many hours of his own free time in the quest for the space tomato.
“’Unfortunately — because that’s just human nature — a lot of people are like, ‘He probably ate the tomato’,’ Rubio said. ‘And I wanted to find it mostly so I could prove like I did not eat the tomato’.”
But the produce was not to be found.
Rubio returned to Earth in September with the tomato unaccounted for. It remained lost until now.
“During a Wednesday news conference, members of the seven-person crew remaining on the space station revealed they had finally located the tomato.
Rubio had ‘been blamed for quite a while for eating the tomato’, NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli said. “But we can exonerate him.”
Rubio’s return to Earth back in September was a historic moment, as his stay on the space station lasted more than a year – 371 days that set a record for the longest period for a US astronaut in microgravity.
“Interviewer: You know when I left the space station, node one was pretty Spartan and Immaculate, and it’s kind of accumulated a lot of stuff over the years and with 275 launches to ISS. Have you guys uh hid anything for future Crews or lost something up there that you’re still looking for?
Astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli: Well, we might have found something that someone had been looking for – for quite a while – our good friend Frank Rubio who headed home [in September] has been blamed for quite a while for eating ‘the Tomato’ but we can exonerate him [chuckles] we found the tomato.”
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