Astroculture – There’s A Word I Had Never Heard Before When Talking About Growing Things

What is astroculture? It is space agriculture, the growing of plants in outer space. Why do this? Cultivating plants is one of the many projects on the International Space Station (ISS). Plants on the ISS provide food, oxygen, and psychological support to those onboard.

Astroculture studies plant behaviour in extreme environments. It involves technological innovations such as the building of closed-loop life support systems. Instead of soil, plants are grown using novel media like aeroponics and hydroponics. On the ISS, artificial intelligence-enabled sensors monitor the health and growth of plants. The advances made since the first ISS-produced lettuce have encouraged attempting to grow other plants which is a good thing because you use more energy to eat a lettuce leaf than you gain from its consumption.

So what is being grown on the ISS today besides lettuce (the Romaine variety)? So far the list includes:

• Chinese cabbage
• Radishes
• Tomatoes
• Pak Choi
• Radishes
• Tomatoes
• Dwarf wheat

The first Romaine lettuce consumed by ISS astronauts occurred in 2015. Radishes were harvested and eaten in 2020 and Pak choi in 2021. None of the above will provide food self-sufficiency for spacefaring humans. At best, we have side dishes and are a long way from food self-sufficiency in low-Earth orbit (LEO) and on the Moon.

The systems in place today include:

Veggie is a temperature-controlled closed system with programmable lighting that features a Nomex and Kevlar growth medium in which seeds are embedded. The latest improvements to Veggie include PONDS, the Passive Orbital Nutrient Delivery System that automatically feeds and waters plants. Veggie was first introduced on the Space Shuttle, In 2014 it was added to the ISS.

APH stands for the Advanced Plant Habitat. It was introduced to the ISS in 2017. The system uses the Plant Habitat Avionics Real-Time Manager, software designed to provide a nearly self-sufficient system for growing plants in space. APH can be monitored from the ground to minimize crew involvement in maintenance.

On board Tiangong, the Chinese space station, its taikonauts have grown lettuce, cherry tomatoes and green onions. China reports it uses two pieces of equipment to assist in cultivation and integrated into the space station’s ECLSS (Environmental Control and Life Support System).

In Andy Weir’s 2011 novel The Martian, an astronaut in 2035 is left behind when a storm causes fellow crew members to make an emergency evacuation leaving him presumably dead on the surface. He manages to survive and with what remains of the habitat creates an indoor farm where he grows potatoes with cuttings from food reserves that he plants in the Martian soil which he fertilizes with human waste.

NASA plans to do what Weir’s astronaut achieves with a lot more technology. The Agency want missions to the Moon and Mars to become partially self-sustaining for food and medicine. With the latter, NASA has been experimenting with genetically modified tobacco and ten traditional medicinal plants chosen from Chinese and Middle Eastern sources that it is growing in LEO.

NASA is partnering with the University of Guelph’s Controlled Environment Systems Research Facility, in Ontario. There they are working on making future space crews more food self-sufficient. Gioia Massa, a life sciences project scientist at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, notes that the work in Guelph and other facilities will have profound implications for people here on Earth as well as for a future space station, lunar or Martian colony.

Massa sees the astroculture challenges that this research solves for space will have a meaningful impact here on Earth as humanity deals with climate change, sea level rise, groundwater contamination, extreme weather events and soil exhaustion.

Massa believes that part of farming’s future will include growing food in controlled environments like those needed for outer space. He sees these as being scalable to have applicability for environmentally controlled indoor agricultural operations on Earth that could be key to solving future global food security.

On January 13, 2025, I was sent a Stellar Market Research press release which inspired me to look again at this topic. In the release Stellar states that the 2023 space agriculture market was valued at U.S. $5.32 billion. It projects growth to $12.7 billion by 2030, at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 18.2% “driven by advancements in agricultural technologies, rising interest in long-duration space missions, and increasing investments in space exploration.”

Among the advances being made, the press release mentions bio-regenerative life support systems (BLSS) for space habitats similar to the artificial ecosystem that was Biosphere.

If you are not familiar with the two Biosphere experiments, the first Biosphere-1 involved a crew of 8 in 1991 who sealed themselves inside for a planned two years. Biosphere-1 included a mini ocean, wetland, tropical rainforest, savannah, and desert. It was meant to be a self-sustaining ecosystem in a very big bottle, an environment that produced enough oxygen, sequestered carbon dioxide (CO2), purified water, recycled waste, and food. In the end, it failed. Why? The conclusion was that it was built too small to sustain 8 humans. The material choices were wrong. The concrete walls sucked up too much CO2 not leaving enough for plants. The glass ceiling created a wet hothouse that led to ecosystem imbalances and failures. The desert got too wet. The environment was overrun by fauna that contributed nothing to enhancing sustainability. Ants and cockroaches seemed to love it. Not much else.

To make amends and correct the deficiencies of the failed Biosphere experiment, ongoing global research on BLSS is being done at places like the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology, Thailand’s Geo-Informatics and Space Technology Development Agency, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Singapore’s AgriFood Tech Hub, the European Space Agency (ESA), SpaceX, the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), and NASA.

The next generation of space stations is right around the corner and soon will be the beneficiaries of the work being done at these institutions and agencies today. Hence, the forecast for this emerging market is optimistic.