Astronauts harvest, eat first chile pepper crop on space station

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station harvested chile peppers for the first time, and taste-tested the fruits of their labor. The chile peppers started growing aboard the orbiting laboratory on July 12, 2021 and are part of the Plant Habitat-04 investigation. This study is one of the most complex crops grown in space to date, due to its long grow period and need to be pollinated before producing fruit. NASA astronauts Megan McArthur, Shane Kimbrough, and Mark Vande Hei, and ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Thomas Pesquet each cared for the plants over the last three months. Vande Hei conducted today’s harvest, clipping peppers and photographing them before they all sampled them, and filled out surveys to collect data on their taste tests. This experiment is part of NASA’s research into growing crops in space since fruits and vegetables can supplement astronauts’ diet with key nutrients like Vitamin C and Vitamin K, which explorers will need during long-duration deep space missions in the future.