Traditional agriculture involves soil, water, sunlight, and a source of nutrients, but what if it is an unconventional form of agriculture? Many of us heard of creating civilization on Mars; even the CEO of Space X, Elon Musk, announced online “that he aims to transport one million people to the Red Planet, stating that ‘civilization only passes the single-planet Great Filter when Mars can survive even if Earth supply ships stop coming.’” In addition, when astronauts are in space, they get vitamin deficiencies because they only eat freeze-dried, prepackaged food. So how will people survive without food in space?
To test growing food in space, NASA began the microgravity gardens. One is “Veggie” (Vegetable Production System), a garden in the International Space Station and the size of a carry-on luggage. It can hold up to six plants, and they grow in a “pillow” made with clay-based growth media and fertilizer. Due to the zero-gravity environment, plants inside Veggie are grown with magenta-colored LED lights. For the plants to grow, the crew must water them. However, there is also the Passive Orbital Nutrient Delivery System (PONDS) that works with the “Veggie” to deliver some water and nutrients to the plants. Until now, the “Veggie” has been successful at growing crops, such as three types of lettuce, Chinese cabbage, mizuna mustard, red Russian kale, and zinnia flowers.
The Kennedy Space Center houses the APH (Advanced Plant Habitat), a closed chamber dedicated to agricultural research. APH uses LED lights, a porous clay substrate, and controlled-release fertilizer. Unlike Veggie, it has more LED light colors: red, green, blue, white, and infrared for nighttime imaging. In addition, fully automated water recovery, water distribution, temperature, atmosphere, and moisture content. Once a harvest is ready for research studies, the crew collects and preserves the samples by freezing or chemicals. Then, the crew sends them back down to Earth to be studied so scientists can better understand how space affects their growth and development.
The LED lights are used in place of sunlight in both systems because they allow the plants’ chlorophyll to absorb the light to convert to energy easily. Therefore, LED lights promote photosynthesis. LED lights are also inexpensive other alternatives to mimic sunlight.
PESTO was an experiment conducted to test microgravity's effects on wheat plants in space. It was concluded that microgravity affected the plants in leaf development, plant cells, and the chloroplasts during photosynthesis. However, microgravity did not harm the plants overall, but the wheat plants did grow 10% more in space than on Earth.
A challenge for growing plants in space is keeping plants alive without drowning them in water. XROOTS (eXposed ROOTS) was a study that tested hydroponics and aeroponics techniques rather than traditional agriculture methods. These techniques are also proven to be used in the “Veggie” and the APH gardens.
When the plants go to space, they experience genetic changes by adding more information to their DNA. This affects how the genes turn on or off, but not the DNA sequence. This change is known as an epigenetic change “the study of how your behaviors and environment can cause changes that affect the way your genes work.”
During the investigation of VEG-03, which involved cultivating various plants like Extra Dwarf Bok Choi, Outrageous lettuce, and Dragoon lettuce, NASA astronaut Mike Hopkins observed that some of the plants were encountering difficulties after the transplantation. Hopkins conducted the space’s first plant transplant by moving plants from a thriving pillow to struggling pillows. After the transplant, the plants managed to survive, opening the possibility of using the “Veggie” to grow food in space.
