A viral space mystery with a very terrestrial answer
A photo taken by NASA astronaut Don Pettit has been making the rounds online after some users decided it looked less like produce and more like something that escaped from a science fiction set. The image, shot aboard the International Space Station, shows a purple, egg-shaped object with what appear to be tentacles growing from one end. Naturally, the internet did what it does best and panicked first, thought later.
Pettit, who has spent just under 25 years in space and built up an impressive portfolio of space photography along the way, has previously shared shots of comets and the aurora display in October 2024. This one, however, prompted a more colorful response than usual.
One Instagram user wrote, “Destroy it, now! And never come back to earth!” Another chimed in on Reddit: “I’ve seen this movie before. That’s an alien egg.”
Meet “Spudnik-1”
The mystery was not extraterrestrial at all. Pettit later explained that the object was simply a potato he had been growing in his spare time, which he dubbed “Spudnik-1.” The “tentacles” are just sprouts, doing what sprouts do, except in zero gravity, where they grow in every direction instead of behaving themselves.
In his post caption, Pettit said the potato-growing experiment was part of his off-duty time. He also noted that the gray patch on the side of the potato was “a spot of hook Velcro to anchor it in my improvised grow light terrarium.”
Pettit added: “Potatoes are one of the most efficient plants based on edible nutrition to total plant mass (including roots),” and said the crop will matter for future space exploration. He pointed to Andy Weir’s The Martian as a reason potatoes have already earned their place in the space-food conversation, then added that he thought it was worth getting started now.
So, no alien hatchling. Just a potato with excellent branding and a very unusual growing environment. The cosmos remains intact, at least for the moment.
