Fresh tomato floats in space

Now there's a sight you don't see every day.

That's a fresh tomato, free-floating in micro-gravity, some 370 kilometres above our heads, while travelling at over 27,000 kilometres per hour! You may be tempted to cry "fake!", but the picture was posted to the Twitter account of Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata, who is currently on board the International Space Station, along with the rather poetic message: "One fresh tomato for dinner makes us happy in space."

This cheery red guy made the journey on the Soyuz TMA-11M mission that carried Wakata, Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin and American astronaut Richard Mastracchio, as well as the Olympic torch, up to the space station on November 7th. The crew of the ISS doesn't necessarily need to have fresh foods to get the nutrition they need, but they're provided for exactly the reason that Wakata's tweet hints at — good morale.

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Wakata continues the now 'grand tradition', made popular by our own Chris Hadfield, of posting incredible images from the space station on his Twitter account, including views of Earth, pictures of Tokyo and Mt. Fuji, and this one:

That's probably his best one so far. I'm looking forward to seeing more during his six months on board, and it would be great to see some videos of him interacting with his robotic crew member, Kirobo.

(Photo courtesy: Koichi Wakata/JAXA)

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