There are many perks to being an astronaut, but consuming fresh vegetables isn’t usually one of them.
This is why International Space Station crewmembers Scott Kelly, Kjell Lindgren, and Kimiya Yui look so excited to eat red romaine lettuce in this video:
For the first time ever, we are growing fresh vegetables on the ISS. We have seen prototypes of “space gardens” in such movies as Danny Boyle’s “Sunshine,” but what was fiction has now become reality.
The practice of growing vegetables is, of course, crucial for long-term missions into deep space. This is why NASA has appropriately joked that “That's one small bite for a man, one giant leaf for mankind.”
