1 hour ago
2
Call it Spud-nick.
An image of a tentacled growth in space has caused an uproar online with freaked-out viewers imploring astronauts to “kill it with fire.”
Viral photos showed the floating, purple egg-shaped object with tendrils exploding out of it like the poster for the 1979 sci-fi horror flick “Alien.”
Thankfully, the real item isn’t as insidious as it seems. In a viral X post, NASA astronaut Don Pettit explained that the anomaly was an “orbiting” potato, dubbed Spudnik-1, that he grew onboard the International Space Station as part of an ongoing interstellar horticulture hobby.
“This is an early purple potato, complete with spot of hook Velcro to anchor it in my improvised grow light terrarium,” the scientist explained. “I flew potatoes on Expedition 72 for my space garden, an activity I did in my off-duty time.”
He explained that spuds are some of the most inefficient plants when it comes to the ratio of edible nutrition to total plant mass (including roots).
He noted that they were a plot point in his space survival novel”The Martian,” the basis for the 2015 Matt Damon movie of the same name.
Viewers were nonetheless freaked out by the image with one commenter writing, “bro I genuinely thought this was some kind of egg hatching.”
“Somehow the Velcro makes it look alien. Time to bring back quarantines lol,” said another.
A third advised, “kill it with fire!!!”
Others were curious about the agricultural aspects of growing potatoes in space.
“How did it compare to growing potatoes on earth?” inquired one inquisitive mind. “Does the potato know how to send the plant above the soil and the roots/tuber down into the soil in microgravity?”
“The roots would grow in all directions absent gravity, and all plants I have ever grown in space have grown far slower than they would have on Earth,” Pettit replied. “I have more pictures I will share later.”
This is more than just some cosmic party trick. With the pending Artemis moon mission and SpaceX and other agencies eyeing expeditions to Mars in the future, sustaining astronauts on long-haul voyages becomes increasingly crucial.
Finnish startup Solar Foods is currently collaborating with the European Space Agency (ESA) on a project to see if a novel “space food” concocted from urine can be manufactured on the ISS.
While perhaps gross-sounding, the spacely sustenance would prevent the station from having to rely on food that’s manufactured on Earth and transported to the station like they do currently, which costs them a pretty penny and doesn’t fly for long-distance trips.
English (US)