Astronaut suspected of scoffing space tomato cleared after surprise appearance
An astronaut suspected of eating a precious tomato grown in orbit has been cleared โ after it showed up on the International Space Station nine months later.
NASA spaceman Frank Rubio was accused of secretly scoffing a 1in-wide Red Robin dwarf tomato he had grown as part of an experiment named Veg-05 conducted abroad the station which has circled the Earth for the past 25 years.
Each astronaut received a sample after the March 29 harvest of the first toms grown in space.
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But Rubio claimed his โstored in a Ziploc bag โ floated away in micro-gravity. He said he spent 20 hours of his own time scouring the space station โ the size of a six-bedroom house – for the missing salad.
"I spent so many hours looking for that thing," he told a livestream from the space station which orbits the planet at an altitude of 254 miles.
"I'm sure the desiccated tomato will show up at some point and vindicate me, years in the future.''
Upon his return to Earth in October following 371 days in space he said he feared the low humidity would cause the tom to become 'desiccated to the point where you couldn't tell what it was' and `somebody just threw away the bag'.
"Hopefully somebody will find it someday โ a little, shrivelled thing,'' he added.
Now the tomato has turned up โ proving Rubio did not eat it.
In her own livestream from the space station his fellow NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli (corr) announced: "Our good friend Frank Rubio, who headed home, has been blamed for quite a while for eating the tomato. "But we can exonerate him. We found the tomato.''
The experiment was designed to find out if it was possible to grow fruit and veg in space. But small objects can float off in the micro-gravity on board the space station. NASA's procedure is usually to check vent intakes.
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