A viral report amplified by The Times of India is broadly factual on its central claim: NASA astronaut Don Pettit did identify the strange purple object photographed aboard the International Space Station (ISS) as a potato he had grown in orbit.
The clearest public confirmation comes from Pettit’s own remarks, relayed by Fox Weather, rather than from a dedicated NASA press release about a formal potato experiment.
What is confirmed
According to Fox Weather, Pettit described the object as “Spudnik-1” and said he had flown potatoes on Expedition 72 for a personal “space garden” project done in his off-duty time. He also described it as an early purple potato that he anchored with Velcro in an improvised grow-light terrarium. That makes the core story real: a NASA astronaut did grow a purple potato aboard the ISS.
Where some headlines go too far
The more careful reading is that this appears to have been Pettit’s own off-duty growing project, not a prominently announced NASA flagship crop trial. In the NASA pages reviewed for this article, the agency confirms Pettit’s mission and NASA’s broader plant-growth work in space, but I did not find a standalone NASA news release presenting this potato as a formal, named ISS research milestone on the level of Veggie or other well-documented plant investigations.
That does not make the story false – only more limited and more personal than some headlines imply.
The mission context checks out
NASA’s own records confirm that Pettit served on Expedition 72 and returned to Earth on April 19, 2025 after a 220-day mission aboard the station. NASA’s Expedition 72 page also places the mission from September 23, 2024 to April 18, 2025, which aligns with the timeframe cited in media reports about the potato image.
Why the potato matters beyond the viral moment
NASA has made clear for years that growing plants in space matters for both research and long-duration exploration. The agency says the Veggie system on the ISS is used to study plant growth in microgravity while also adding fresh food and supporting crew well-being.
Pettit also said potatoes could have a place in future space exploration because of the edible nutrition they provide relative to total plant mass. So even if this was an informal side project, it still fits into a serious larger conversation about food production beyond Earth.
Which other outlets are reporting it
Beyond The Times of India, I found the story reported by Fox Weather, The Economic Times, and Moneycontrol. Of those, Fox Weather appears to offer the strongest sourcing because it directly relays Pettit’s own explanation. The Economic Times also explicitly describes the potato as part of Pettit’s off-duty space-gardening efforts.
Bottom line
Yes – the story is factual in substance. A NASA astronaut really did grow a purple potato aboard the ISS, and the viral image is not a hoax. But the most accurate framing is that Don Pettit appears to have done this as a personal off-duty “space garden” project during Expedition 72, not as a heavily publicized official NASA potato program.
That distinction matters, especially for a publication like Potato News Today that values precision over hype.
Author: Lukie Pieterse, editor/publisher Potato News Today
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