If you were in a classroom in the early 1990s, there is a real chance you planted a piece of space history without even realizing it. NASA sent Rutgers tomato seeds into space for nearly six years and then gave them to 3.3 million students across the country, according to NASA's Technical Reports Server. Years before people started talking about growing food on Mars, this quiet classroom project was already testing whether seeds could survive years of space radiation and still grow.
Why NASA left seeds in orbit for six years
