No, this is not a photoshop. You are looking at a fresh tomato—a cosmomato? A tomatonaut?—floating in space, orbiting at 4.791 miles per second, 230 miles above your heads. Why the hell is there a tomato in space?
If you’re a good spacenerd cadet, you know already that the only things orbiting at 4.791 miles per second, 230 miles above your heads, and capable of having a fresh tomato onboard could be a) the International Space Station or b) an alien spaceship full of sentient, warp-drive capable alien tomatoes getting ready to strike our planet for centuries of tomato sacrifices by humans.
Astronaut Koichi Wakata has the answer: “One fresh tomato for dinner makes us happy in space. It came up with us on Soyuz TMA-11M two weeks ago.” I wish I could have tomato salads in space too.
