Just a couple of months ago, astronaut Frank Rubio returned from the International Space Station after setting an American record of 371 consecutive days in orbit. Now we find out that Rubio's time on the ISS was not without controversy. There was the case of the missing tomato.
The ISS has been growing a vegetable garden to see if space travelers could grow their own food. Rubio ceremoniously plucked the first dwarf tomato from the garden and used it to demonstrate the agricultural experiment to school children. Then the tomato went missing. On the ISS, it's difficult to keep track of things that aren't tied down (usually with Velcro) and it's also important to know where everything is, lest random objects interfere with equipment. Rubio spent between eight and 20 hours of his own free time searching for it. He mainly wanted to prove that he didn't eat the historic tomato. But it was not to be found.
Until now! Eight months after the incident, astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli notified NASA that something that might have once been a small tomato has been found on the space station. Rubio has been exonerated for the sin of eating a space tomato. -via Boing Boing
(Image credit:Koichi Wakata/Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency/NASA)