NASA Astronauts Stuck in Space For Months Are Now Growing Lettuce — But It's Not For Dinner

It has been more than 8 months since NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore lifted off from Earth aboard Boeing Starliner. Floating nearly 263 miles away from their home planet for all these months, they’ve probably forgotten what it means to walk. But reportedly, they’ve commented that they’re “not stranded or abandoned,” but rather “prepared and committed.” Far from feeling homesick, the astronauts are happily spending their days performing science experiments and conducting spacewalks. But perhaps, the most intriguing experiment they’ve participated in so far is growing food in space. Recently, NASA reported that Williams and her fellow crew members grew lettuce at the International Space Station (ISS) as part of an agricultural study.

Wilmore started harvesting red lettuce in the Kibo laboratory module of the station in its Advanced Plant Habitat-07. He installed the science carrier packed with red romaine lettuce seeds in this habitat, while the flight engineer, Nick Hague, prepared water refill bags and injected water into the plant habitat to kick-start the growth of a small crop of lettuce.

NASA explained that he recently visited the module along with Hague to pick a small clump of the lab-grown green veggie. He started the job by collecting the leaves, packing them in pouches, and stowing the samples in a science freezer for analysis. Meanwhile, the flight engineer Don Pettit extracted the roots from the Plant Habitat, collected water samples for analysis, and photographed the research hardware. The goal of this botany experiment was to assess “the nutritional value of food grown in space and may promote growing crops on future missions.”

Another similar project that this team undertook was Plant UV-B, the objective of which was to observe how microgravity stress and high ultraviolet radiation affect plants to promote growing space crops. Williams, the Indian-origin astronaut, and the station’s commander, also worked on genetically engineered yeast to investigate and produce on-demand nutrients and vitamins. If this project turned out to be successful, it’d be revolutionary as the microgravity environment usually causes nutrient deficiency in astronauts’ bodies. The crew also serviced electronics gear and packed a cargo craft for departure.

After arriving at the ISS in June 2024, Williams and Wilmore were supposed to stay in space for a week-long mission. But their stay was unusually prolonged due to some problems with their spacecraft’s thrusters and propulsion system, apart from some helium leaks. The spaceship was considered too unsafe by NASA to bring the astronauts. So they’re now making the best use of this extra time they’ve got in space to perform various experiments and gain valuable insights about life in space, in addition to some surreal spacewalking.

Recently, they performed a 6-hour-long spacewalk to replace degraded communications hardware and collect samples from the space station exterior to check for microbes in its dirt. NASA (@nasa) even shared a selfie of Williams on Instagram while she broke the previous record of being the longest spacewalker. According to CNN, Williams and Wilmore will now return to Earth sometime in late March, aboard Elon Musk’s SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule. The two astronauts will replace the Crew-10 mission members when they arrive at the space station aboard Crew Dragon Endurance. Their return flight will also include Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov who too are currently onboard the ISS.