Moghbeli didn’t offer details on where the tomato was found, nor what condition it was in.

Start with that, instead of everything that’s less relevant. The only interesting part of this story is where it would’ve been this whole time, how something can be lost in such a closed system, and the answer is no answer.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

That is, until this week, when the seven astronauts at the International Space Station announced on the 25th anniversary of the orbiter that they found the rogue fruit.

The red robin tomato was harvested as part of a NASA experiment to grow produce in space for longer-term missions in the future.

He said he ended up taking the tomato out of the safety of the Ziploc bag to show some students the prized produce, but seemed to misplace it afterwards.

Rubio said he unsuccessfully spent about 18 to 20 hours searching for the tomato, and assumed it would have “desiccated to the point where you couldn’t tell what it was” and may have been tossed in the trash accidentally.

In the months since the juicy piece of produce vanished, some suspected Rubio actually ate the tomato — a claim he denied up until it was found.

“Hopefully somebody will find it someday, some little shriveled thing in a Ziploc bag and they can prove the fact that I did not eat the tomato in space,” he half-joked, half-manifested in October.

The original article contains 446 words, the summary contains 179 words. Saved 60%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!