NASA Astronauts Have Finally Cracked the Mysterious Case of a Tomato That Got Lost in Space

In March 2023, hundreds of miles away from Earth, a 1-inch-wide Red Robin dwarf tomato became one of the greatest mysteries of the universe, as it sneaked away from inside a Ziploc bag and got lost in space. All blame was attributed to the NASA astronaut Frank Rubio, who was tasked with harvesting these tomatoes as part of the project XROOTS. For eight long months, Rubio was blamed for eating this tomato. This pestering wound didn’t let him live until another astronaut aboard the space station unknowingly solved the mystery. “Let’s Ketchup” with the tomato, NASA quipped in a press release.

The mysterious case of this tomato unfolded during the XROOTS’ project, designed to use aeroponic and hydroponic techniques to grow plants without soil, the first ever harvest of this kind. Since the harvest experiments at that time weren’t scaling too remarkably due to maintenance and sanitation issues, this soil-less technique could provide a better alternative for plant growth needed during long-term space exploration missions. The project came under the Veg-05 investigation that aimed at building a continuous fresh-food production system in space.

On the 25th anniversary of the ISS, NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli publicly called out Rubio, exclaiming how he dared to lose the precious little tomato. "Our good friend Frank Rubio, who headed home already, has been blamed for quite a while for eating the tomato. But we can exonerate him. We found the tomato," Moghbeli can be heard speaking in the livestream.

Feeling culpable, Rubio responded with the innocent explanation that he had placed the tomato carefully in a Ziploc bag, but by the time he returned to the cabin, the tomato had gone missing. "I put [the tomato] in a little bag, and one of my crewmates was doing [an] event with some schoolkids, and I thought it'd be kind of cool to show the kids, 'Hey guys, this is the first tomato harvested in space,' " he said in a video shared by NASA Johnson. "Then, I was pretty confident that I Velcroed it where I was supposed to Velcro it, and then I came back and it was gone."

Rubio was privileged to become an American astronaut who spent 371 days, the longest spaceflight duration ever, in space. Two weeks after he returned from the mission, his case was taken by the space agency’s officials, who bombarded him with questions related to the mystery. "I wanted to find it mostly so I could prove, like, 'I did not eat the tomato. A proud moment of harvesting the first tomato in space became a self-inflicted wound of losing the first tomato in space," he explained.

He spent somewhere around 8 to 12 hours finding that tomato, but the tomato just seemed to have gotten lost in space. For the next eight months, the case of this missing tomato spawned imaginary scenarios in the minds of the masses. Everyone thought that the baby tomato was hurtling and flinging somewhere in deep space, crashing and clinging to stars and planets. But it seemed the case was much simpler. The humid and microgravity conditions of the space station laboratory had dislodged the tomato from its position.

Eight months later, the rogue fruit was found tucked in a plastic bag, “dehydrated and slightly squished with some discoloration but with no visible microbial and fungal growth.” Good for Rubio, he can now walk planet Earth free of blame. The wound has been healed, and this lighthearted mystery episode will probably remind him for the rest of his life that truth can’t be lost in space. And tomato too

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