Astronauts aboard the International Space Station have successfully cultivated vegetables in space. They were grown in the space station's greenhouse "Lada," which is a vegetation chamber created to provide a "space garden" for astronauts during their long flights.

The harvested radishes, peas and lettuce were safe to eat and provided astronauts with a good source of nutrition during their stay on the ISS. The process also helped the astronauts gather useful information for space-based food growing techniques. Growing vegetables could be extremely useful for astronauts who are planning to participate in long-duration space flights or those that spent a while on the space station. The Lada greenhouse has finally shown that it's possible.

The LADA Validating Vegetable Production Unit is an experimental greenhouse where astronauts have the freedom to grow plants. They have the ability to control the amount of water and light that is provided; both essential aspects when growing plants.

"Growing food to supplement and minimize the food that must be carried to space will be increasingly important on long-duration missions," said Space Dynamics Laboratory engineer Shane Topham in this Tech Times article. "We also are learning about the psychological benefits of growing plants in space--something that will become more important as crews travel farther from Earth."

The vegetation experiment was conducted to achieve four goals: Determine whether food grown in space is safe to eat; understand microbiological implications of farming in space; solve the problem of vegetable sanitation of the space-grown plants; and understand how to make the growing process as efficient as possible.

In order for humans to further explore space, especially on long journeys such as the ones that are expected to deploy to Mars by 2030, it is imperative that a reliable and plentiful food supply is available. Growing these vegetables also provides insight into the issue of supplying massive amounts of food when astronauts are sent on long missions. The team of Russian "space farmers" that completed this experiment will be remembered when further discoveries are made.

To read more about vegetation in space, visit this Tech Times article.