Space agriculture will be a very important aspect of establishing a sustainable human presence beyond Low Earth Orbit (LEO), on the Moon and Mars to begin with. To achieve this, scientists and astronauts have spent years trying to grow plants across different species on the International Space Station (ISS). Recently, Dr. Christina Johnson, NASA Postdoctoral Fellow at the Kennedy Space Center, reports on progress in space agriculture to date and also reveals the crops astronauts will grow on Mars.
What do we eat on Mars?
On a recent episode of NASA’s Gravity Assist podcast, Johnson said the crops most likely to be grown on Mars are staples, which are consumed regularly and make up a large part of a person’s diet. “Maybe we’re talking rice, potatoes and sweet potatoes,” he said in the podcast transcript. “Sweet potatoes are one of my favorite foods because you can eat the leaves too – the little ones, which are really good.” Talking about his work on flower development, he said ginger was great and “definitely we should get it on Mars.”
(Christina Johnson working on plants in her lab at the Kennedy Space Center, Photo: Twitter/@ISS_Research)
According to Johnson, the mizuna plant, the mustard plant, is one of the “hard-working plants” that thrives in space. Plus, red romaine lettuce is another plant that does well in space and also tastes great because it has a neutral flavor, the expert said. “Astronauts can eat it right away. We call them ‘pick and eat’ plants. They don’t need to make any preparations,” he said. The latest advances in space agriculture came late last year when astronauts were able to grow chili peppers on the space station as part of the Plant Habitat-04 (PH-04) experiment.
Space farming challenge
The NASA expert also emphasized the challenges that arise in the field of space farming. He said that lack of gravity, good airflow and the right amount of sunlight are the main challenges in space agriculture and these are conditions that astronauts must ensure when growing crops. He also saw that for food security on the Moon, we would need additional food delivered regularly from Earth. “It’s expensive. Difficult. But it’s not impossible,” he said. As for Mars, growing staple crops would be the best choice. This is because a months-long round trip to Mars would degrade the vitamins and general quality of the transported food.
–
