A foodie space mystery has finally been solved.
The remains of a tiny tomato lost by NASA astronaut Frank Rubio after an off-Earth harvest in March finally showed up on the International Space Station (ISS), more than eight months later.
“Our good friend Frank Rubio, who headed home [already], has been blamed for quite a while for eating the tomato. But we can exonerate him. We found the tomato,” NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli said during a livestreamed event on Wednesday (Dec. 6) that celebrated the ISS’ 25th anniversary. (Moghbeli did not elaborate where the tomato was found, or what condition it was in).
The minor incident turned into a large inside joke for Rubio in the fall. The 1-inch-wide (2.5 centimeters) Red Robin dwarf tomato was a part of the final harvest for the Veg-05 experiment that Rubio himself had tended through some growing pains.
Each ISS astronaut received samples of the tomatoes after the March 29, 2023 harvest, but Rubio’s share — stored in a Ziploc bag — floated away before he could take a bite.
The missing tomato was first discussed publicly on Sept. 13, when Rubio had his own event in space marking an unexpected record year in orbit for a United States astronaut. (Problems with Rubio’s Russian Soyuz spacecraft, which were eventually resolved with the launch of a replacement Soyuz, doubled his expected six-month stay.)
“I spent so many hours looking for that thing,” Rubio joked during the ISS livestream in September. “I’m sure the desiccated tomato will show up at some point and vindicate me, years in the future.”
To be fair to Rubio, the ISS is larger than a six-bedroom house, and, in microgravity, things can easily float away to unexpected corners. NASA’s procedure is usually to check vent intakes, but in a station crowded with 25 years of stuff, it’s easy to lose track of individual items.
Also, the tomato search did not unduly occupy his time, as Rubio’s Soyuz crew performed hundreds of other science experiments (despite the stress of the delay). If anything, the situation may show more about how to deal with the unexpected when growing plants on the moon or Mars, which the Veggie series of experiments eventually aims to achieve.
Reporters asked Rubio about the lost tomato on Oct. 13, about two weeks after he safely returned home with his delayed crew (Russian cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev…
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