Two wrinkled tomatoes sit inside a plastic bag. One has turned yellowish; the other is a shriveled red. This could be a forgotten kitchen discovery, except the bag was photographed aboard the International Space Station.
A December 14, 2023 mission update described their recovery nearly a year after astronaut Frank Rubio lost track of them during the XROOTS plant experiment.
For the crew, the find also settled a joke about whether Rubio had eaten the missing produce. The answer was in the bag.
The punchline was in a plastic bag
The recovered tomatoes were dehydrated, squashed and discoloured. The update reported no visible fungal or microbial growth. That description is an observation of their appearance, not a food-safety test or an invitation to taste them.
Crew members had joked about whether Rubio had eaten the missing produce. Finding it settled that particular running joke. The fruit was discarded, rather than sent back to Earth for analysis.
The mystery had a small, unglamorous ending: two dried fruits in a bag. The experiment that produced them was a different matter.
Growing the tomatoes was the serious part
XROOTS explored ways to grow plants using hydroponic and aeroponic techniques, without soil or other growth media. The lost fruit belonged to that experiment. Another tomato investigation, VEG-05, was also underway during Rubio’s stay, but it was a separate study.
A report on the VEG-05 harvest explains what researchers wanted to measure: how lighting and fertilizer affected the plants’ production, nutritional qualities and microbial safety. Crew members gathered harvests at three stages, freezing samples for examination on Earth.
That work puts the funny photograph into perspective. A future crew travelling far from Earth would have a practical reason to care about reliable fresh food. A tomato can be an experiment as well as a snack.
A space garden has ordinary-looking problems
A separate account of VEG-05’s difficulties describes a humidity drop early in the study. Materials meant to keep germinating seeds moist dried out. Adding water brought further difficulties, including uneven growth.
The report records 12 ripe tomatoes produced in orbit, with the small sample and concerns about possible fungal contamination preventing a crew taste test. Those are findings from VEG-05; they should be kept distinct from the recovered XROOTS fruit in the cover image.
The everyday vocabulary is striking: humidity, watering, germination, stressed plants. The setting is extraordinary, but keeping a crop alive still involves details a gardener would recognise.
That is what makes this story more satisfying than a lost-object joke alone. The shrivelled tomatoes show a very human mishap inside a working laboratory, where a tiny crop can raise much larger questions about living beyond Earth.