It might have remained one of the greatest mysteries of the universe, destined never to be solved until a freak recent discovery by the crew of the International Space Station (ISS).
The subject? A tomato grown from seed in microgravity by American astronaut Francisco “Frank” Rubio as part of an agricultural experiment.
Rubio was accused of eating the fruit when it inexplicably disappeared more than eight months ago. However, the tiny specimen, or at least its remains, has now been found, according to members of the seven-strong crew during a live stream this week to celebrate the orbiting outpost’s 25th anniversary.
“Our good friend, Frank Rubio, has been blamed for some time for eating the tomato. But we can acquit him. We found the tomato,” said Nasa astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli. reported by space.com.
She did not specify where on the 356ft space station the 1in-wide red dwarf tomato was located, or in what condition.
But the news of its existence will have come as a relief to Rubio, a lieutenant colonel in the US Army who returned to Earth on September 27 after serving a record 371 days in spacethe most for any American astronaut in history.
At his post-landing briefing he mentioned the loss of the tomato, which was part of a in-space lettuce-growth experiment designed to advance knowledge of how to sustain astronauts during long missions, and feared he would forever be branded a tomato thief.
“Hopefully someone will find it one day, a little shriveled thing,” he told reporters, after claiming to have searched for it for up to 20 hours after it disappeared during a harvesting process.
“I was pretty confident that I had Velcroed it where I was supposed to Velcro it. And then I came back, and it was gone.”
The specific project that the tomato was a part of is officially known as Fight-05A Nasa label to avoid the mouthful of its official name, the “pick-and-eat salad crop productivity, nutritional value and acceptability to supplement the ISS food system” investigation.
In addition to evaluating the viability and effects of spaceflight on fruit crop growth under different light conditions, the experiment also provides astronauts with taste tests and a survey to determine whether interacting with plants in the spaceflight environment provides any psychological uplift or otherwise affects their mood.
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The ISS has its own vegetable production system, known as Veggie, and the opportunity to work on it is one of the perks of space travel for many astronauts. Rubio spoke fondly of his time growing and harvesting, despite the tomato mishap, and Nasa officials say the work provides valuable knowledge that will benefit future generations of astronauts.
“We have learned a lot more about this crop and we will continue to learn as much. We will get as much science out of this as possible,” Dr Gioia Massa, life science project scientist at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center, said in a Nasa article published online.
The infamous Rubio tomato turned out to be one of only 12 red dwarfs that successfully germinated and grew to maturity in space during the Veg-05 project, compared to more than 100 in a parallel experiment conducted on Earth, according to Nasa.
