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Astronauts on International Space Station are growing chile peppers in a first for NASA:
The astronauts are growing red and green chile peppers in space for what will be "one of the longest and most challenging plant experiments attempted aboard the orbital lab," NASA said.
Hatch chile pepper seeds arrived at the station in June aboard a SpaceX commercial resupply services mission.
NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough, a flight engineer who helped grow "Outredgeous" red romaine lettuce in space in 2016, initiated the experiment by inserting 48 seeds into the Advanced Plant Habitat (APH) on July 12.
A team with Kennedy Space Center's Exploration Research and Technology programs planted those seeds in a device called a science carrier, which slots into the APH, one of the three plant growth chambers on the orbiting laboratory where the astronauts raise crops.
[...] Researchers spent two years evaluating more than two dozen pepper varieties and eventually landed on the NuMex "Española Improved" pepper, a hybrid Hatch pepper from New Mexico.
While astronauts have previously harvested veggies such as lettuce and radishes, this experiment could give astronauts something to satisfy their menu fatigue.
Romeyn said crew members may prefer spicy or seasoned foods because they can temporarily lose their sense of taste or smell after living in microgravity.
The peppers should be ready for harvest in about three and a half months. After eating some of them, the crew plans to send the rest to Earth for analysis.
Also at USA Today.
[Ed note] Apparently there are several variations on the spelling of chilli:
The chili pepper (also chile, chile pepper, chilli pepper, or chilli), from Nahuatl chīlli [...], is the berry-fruit of plants from the genus Capsicum which are members of the nightshade family, Solanaceae.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday July 21 2021, @03:36AM (5 children)
FWIW, chiles aren't generally very hot. We could get into a discussion about which peppers are hot, and find ourselves sitting between habaneros and hell - but chiles are pretty mild.
The angle I don't see explored here is, peppers are rich in vitamin C. That should come in handy for space travelers.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 21 2021, @04:49AM (3 children)
Spot the guy who never cooked for kids. Black pepper is too hot, paprika is too hot, hell cumin is too hot. And don't talk to me about turmeric.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday July 21 2021, @05:18AM
Some kids. I loved jalapeño peppers as a kid. Hardly the hottest pepper out there but considerably more than pepper or paprika. It all depends on the kid.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday July 21 2021, @05:45AM
I raised 3 sons. I'll never forget the day I was left home with the three of them, and the two older boys just disappeared. I searched frantically for about 1/2 hour, before I FINALLY stumbled across them in the garden. (boys were about 2 1/2 feet tall, pepper plants ranged from 3 to 5 feet tall) The little shits were devouring all of the hot peppers. They didn't want anything to do with the bell peppers, they concentrated on the two rows of hot peppers.
Like sjames told you, "some kids".
(Score: 1) by ncc74656 on Thursday July 22 2021, @05:32PM
Back when I was a Boy Scout, I once made a pot of chili while we were out camping. For a batch that filled maybe half or a bit more of an 8-quart pot, I probably dumped in a half-cup of chili powder, not knowing just how hot that was going to be. Previously, Mom gave me a baggie with the right amount of chili powder to use, but this time she just gave me the whole jar and wondered why it came back nearly empty.
It ended up too hot for most of the troop. :) It was about at the limit of what I could handle (nowadays, I'd use maybe a quarter-cup of chili powder for a nice bit of heat that may or may not need some Tabasco sprinkled on it). There was this Korean kid, though, who thought it was the greatest thing ever; he couldn't get enough of it.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 21 2021, @08:13AM
I've done molecular biology on peppers and sweet/bell pepper in the past. The funny thing is that the switch "hot vs. sweet" is just one gene (which could potentially be crossed between some of the species), which is defect in the sweet pepper (it's missing the first part of the gene).
Ref: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-313X.2005.02410.x [wiley.com]