A New Mexico chile plant has been selected by NASA to fly into outer space. As part of a NASA experiment testing how to produce food beyond the Earth’s atmosphere, a hybrid version of a New Mexico chile will be launched to the International Space Station in March 2020. While astronauts have successfully grown leafy greens with NASA’s Advanced Plant Habitat, which recreates environmental needs for plant growth like Co2, humidity and lighting, the chiles will be used to test if the system can sustain fruiting crops. “Understanding how to grow plants to supplement the astronaut’s diet would be essential to our mission to going to Mars. So that kind of fuels our research that we’re doing now,” NASA researcher Jacob Torres told the AP. The hybrid chile plant, dubbed “Española Improved,” is a cross between a northern New Mexico seed and a Sandia seed from Hatch Valley, New Mexico.
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