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Chinese taikonauts started growing greenery. Where? On board the Tiangong-2 orbital laboratory. How? Using 3D printing. What for? I really want to eat.
The Tiangong-2 orbital laboratory serves primarily as a testing ground for the life support systems of the future full-fledged space station, the construction of which is planned to begin in 2019 and complete in the 2022 region. Like Mir or the ISS, the Chinese station will be constructed from several modules, but Tiangong-2 will not be part of the station. In the meantime, Chinese space pilots are using a temporary platform to test the performance of the systems being developed and conduct scientific experiments. One of them was a program for growing lettuce in zero gravity.
Lettuce was chosen for a couple of reasons: firstly, it is a rather unpretentious plant, and secondly, it takes one month for cultivation, which exactly coincides with the time the crew spent on board the laboratory. Of course, simple seedling pots are of little use for the harsh conditions of microgravity, and therefore special 3D-printed containers were made to help space farmers.
To get the coveted greenery, the crew had to resort to various tricks. For example, it is difficult to loosen the earth in space, and they did not take worms on board, and therefore the taikonauts had to regularly inject air into the soil with syringes so that the roots could breathe. By soil, we mean vermiculite, which is full of essential minerals. There was still not enough manure in the already littered near-earth orbit. The light required for photosynthesis was provided by on-board lamps, for fourteen hours a day.
The China National Space Administration (CNSA) says the experiment was an overwhelming success and stresses: "Lettuce people are more common plants." The grown lettuce has been delivered to Earth, although no one is in a hurry to eat it yet: Chinese scientists insist that first you need to check space vegetables for safety, and only then taste. If the salad passes all the tests, then it may very well be that the diet of the taikonauts will be replenished with fresh herbs grown right in space.
