Space cucumbers

WHILE cucumbers may be out of favour on Earth, the vegetable is being grown on board the International Space Station.

Japanese surgeon and JAXA astronaut Satoshi Furukawa lifted off from the Baikonour Cosmodrome in June for a six-month stint in orbit along with cosmonaut Sergey Volkov and NASA astronaut Michael Fossum.

Furukawa plans to grow cucumbers as part of ongoing studies on how future space explorers will be able to harvest their own food. In the wake of an E-coli outbreak which was blamed on contaminated vegetables consumers across Europe have been spurning cucumbers.