Astronauts have grown plants in space!

Space journeys can be very, very long. Sometimes astronauts stay in space for months and months at a time.

And right now there are people training to travel to the planet Mars. It would take so long and be so difficult to get there that the astronauts that make that trip will never come home to Earth again but will live the rest of their lives in space.

But how will they eat?

Planets like Mars do not have an atmosphere like the one on Earth, so you can't grow plants on Mars.

So that astronauts making long space journeys can eat and stay alive, scientists have been working on ways to make food in space - and this week, for the first time ever, astronauts ate vegetables that they grew inside their rocket!

They have a special cabinet that shines light on the plants, because plants need light to grow. The cabinet also helps keep the plants wet, because plants need water too, just like you. The astronauts used special little pillows that had the seeds for the plants inside them to grow this crop of vegetables.

The plants took 33 days to grow before they were eaten. The astronauts ate half of them and froze the rest so that scientists could have a look at the plants when they get back to Earth.

The scientists say that the vegetables are not just good for the astronauts' bodies, but growing plants can help them stay healthy in their minds - being in space for a long, long time could get very, very boring.

The vegetable that the scientists grew and ate was a special kind of red lettuce called Radicchio. You can buy it at the shops - maybe we should all try some red space lettuce for dinner!

Source: NASA

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