NASA Takes Another Step Towards Growing Food In Space

Growing plants in space is hard, for reasons more or less obvious. For one, in the microgravity environment of space, plant roots grow every which way, making it next to impossible for them to absorb the nutrients and water they need to survive.

Despite this, and several other seemingly insurmountable difficulties associated with growing plants in space, astronauts onboard the International Space Station (ISS) were, in August last year, able to grow and even eat vegetables cultivated in space — an achievement NASA described as a “historic vegetable moment.”

Those vegetables — a crop of red romaine lettuce — were grown using the “Veggie” plant growth system on the ISS. The system, installed on the orbiting space lab in 2014, uses a series of red, blue and green LEDs to stimulate plant growth from “pillows” containing seeds, fertilizers and nutrients.

Now, in another step toward cultivating fresh food in space, NASA engineers, scientists and technicians began testing a prototype of its largest plant chamber — the Advanced Plant Habitat (APH). The actual habitat, which will arrive at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida in the coming months, will be delivered to the ISS some time in 2017.