This past Tuesday, the International Space Station said goodbye to 12 bottles of Bordeaux wine and hundreds of snippets of grapevines that spent a year orbiting our earth.
In the name of science, the vinous cargo was dispatched back to earth where agricultural scientists will perform chemical tests to learn more about vegetation growth in a weightless setting.
The elaborate experiment is the brain-child of Nicolas Gaume, a French entrepreneur and video game creator, who believes space agriculture is the way of the future.
“Our goal is to tackle the solution of how we’re going to have an agriculture tomorrow that is both organic and healthy and able to feed humanity, and we think space has the key,” Gaume said from Bordeaux.
Through this and other planned space inquiries, Space Cargo Unlimited, Mr. Gaume’s company, hopes to create more sturdy and resilient plants down in our terrestrial level.
In February, the company will host a wine tasting in Bordeaux for some of France’s top experts. Chemical testing will follow in the ensuing months. Most notably, the researchers are interested in seeing how space altered the sedimentation and bubbles.
When picking wine in the future, why try to seem worldly when you can be out of this world?