The Opal apple variety, which is grown exclusively by Broetje Orchards and distributed under the Opal brand name by First Fruits Marketing in North America, had the honour of being sent up to the International Space Station this past Saturday, 10 January.
The news was first broken last autumn when The Johnson Space Center sent the request for apples to FirstFruits, a collaborative apple marketing company owned by growers.
“This is a special honour, to be able to provide fresh apples to the crew members at the International Space Station,” said Ralph Broetje, owner-operator of Broetje Orchards. “When we got the request for apples we knew right away that we wanted to send Opal, the most special apple in our line-up.”
The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched the seventh Dragon spacecraft on the fifth operational cargo delivery mission to the International Space Station on 10 January from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The flight is being conducted under the Commercial Resupply Services contract with NASA.
NASA indicated in its request it wanted to connect the fresh fruit back to farmers, and approached FirstFruits of Washington and their growers with the request. The founders of Broetje Orchards and exclusive growers of Opal apple in North America, Ralph and Cheryl Broetje, were happy to oblige and are sending a note to accompany the apples to the space station.
Because of the high cost of sending items into space, the quantity of apples is limited, which means only one or two apples per crew member.
This follows the recent space-related news of a pioneering project to grow lettuce on Mars.
