ALT A preflight view of ‘Red Robin’ dwarf tomatoes successfully growing in the ground-based Veggie hardware at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This is part of an experiment titled, “Pick-and-Eat Salad-crop Productivity, Nutritional Value, and Acceptability to Supplement the International Space Station Food System,” which will be delivered to the International Space Station. This investigation is expected to help define light colors, levels, and horticultural best practices to achieve high yields of safe, nutritious tomatoes to supplement a space diet of pre-packaged food and collect human data associated with growing and eating plants. A duplicate ground-study provides a comparison to the plants grown on the space station to determine the effects of spaceflight. Credit: NASA

ALT The constellation Orion appears in a starry night sky above a forest of snowy pine trees. Image credit: NASA/Bill Dunford

ALT An image of Kip Thorne looking directly into the camera. He is wearing a black shirt and black leather jacket