Astronaut's name cleared after missing space tomato is found
Published: Wed, 12/13/23
Astronaut's name cleared after missing space tomato is found
NASA astronaut Frank Rubio was accused of eating the tomato he cultivated on the ISS.
By Ariana Garcia; CHRON.COM
A tomato that went missing on the International Space Station was finally found last week. NASA
The first tomato to ever be grown and harvested in space mysteriously went missing aboard the International Space Station (ISS) earlier this year. Eight months after its disappearance, the elusive red fruit has finally been recovered. "Well we might have found something that someone had been looking for for quite a while," said NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli during a livestream in honor of the station's 25th anniversary on Wednesday.
U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Frank Rubio cultivated the tomato in space in March during his record-breaking stay aboard the ISS, lasting more than 371 days in orbit . It was the single longest spaceflight by an American astronaut in history. The tomato was harvested as part of a NASA experiment to grow produce in space for longer, more distant space missions in the future.
In October, Rubio said he spent around 20 hours searching for the tomato but didn't manage to locate it before returning to Earth. Many accused Rubio of eating the tomato after it went missing. He explained that wasn't the case, insisting he had placed the fleshy fruit in a little bag."I was pretty confident that I Velcroed it where I was supposed to Velcro it, and then I came back and it was gone," Rubio said in a NASA interview at the time. "Hopefully somebody will find it someday, some little shriveled thing in a Ziploc bag and they can prove the fact that I did not eat the tomato in space."
On Wednesday, Moghbeli, one of Rubio's former crewmates, officially clearly his name. "Our good friend Frank Rubio, who headed home, has been blamed for quite a while for eating the tomato," she said. "But we can exonerate him."