NASA Astronaut Scott Kelly shared this incredible video tonight, August 11, showing "our galactic home" with the stars of the Milky Way. Kelly is living and working off the Earth, for the Earth aboard the station for a yearlong mission. Traveling the world more than 220 miles above the Earth, and at 17,500 mph, he circumnavigates the globe more than a dozen times a day conducting research about how the body adapts and changes to living in space for a long duration.
Video credit: NASA
That's one small bite for a man, one giant leaf for mankind: Today, astronauts Scott Kelly, Kjell Lindgren and Kimiya Yui of Japan sample the fruits of their labor after harvesting a crop of "Outredgeous" red romaine lettuce from the Veggie plant growth system on the International Space Station. They are the first people to eat food grown in space.
We’re maturing Veggie technology aboard the space station to provide future pioneers with a sustainable food supplement – a critical part of our Journey to Mars. As we move toward long-duration exploration missions farther into the solar system, Veggie will be a resource for crew food growth and consumption. It also could be used by astronauts for recreational gardening activities during deep space missions.
Why do we explore? Simply put, it is part of who we are, and it is something we have done throughout our history. In "We Are the Explorers," we take a look at that tradition of reaching for things just beyond our grasp and how it is helping us lay the foundation for our greatest journeys ahead. So what are we doing to enable exploration? We’re building the Orion spacecraft is built to take humans farther than they’ve ever gone before. Orion will serve as the exploration vehicle that will carry the crew to space, provide emergency abort capability, sustain the crew during the space travel, and provide safe re-entry from deep space return velocities. Orion will launch on NASA’s new heavy-lift rocket, the Space Launch System.
Also underway, is Astronaut Scott Kelly’s Year In Space. Kelly is living and working off the Earth, for the Earth aboard the station for a yearlong mission. Traveling the world more than 220 miles above the Earth, and at 17,500 mph, he circumnavigates the globe more than a dozen times a day conducting research about how the body adapts and changes to living in space for a long duration.