Gardeners of the Galaxy Mission Report: 18 February 2025
Your weekly round-up of astrobotany news and adventure. This week we're looking at what’s happening on the ISS, China’s deep sea “space” station and more fossils that have been to space!
Hello, Gardeners of the Galaxy! Welcome to this week's Mission Report.
It looks like another run of the Plant Habitat-07 experiment is underway on the International Space Station (ISS). NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore installed the science carrier packed with red romaine lettuce seeds in the Advanced Plant Habitat then collected water samples for analysis. Nick Hague prepared water refill bags and injected water into the plant habitat to begin growing a small crop of lettuce. The space agriculture investigation is exploring optimal plant growth methods in space, the nutritional content of space-grown plants, and the types of microbes they support.
Meanwhile, Don Pettit processed samples and watered Arabidopsis plants that had been growing for two weeks in the Cell Biology Experiment Facility. The samples were then placed inside a science freezer for future analysis. The Plant UV-B study is observing how microgravity stress and high ultraviolet radiation affects plants to promote growing space crops.
And Suni Williams continued the BioNutrients investigation into using genetically engineered yeast to produce on-demand nutrients and avoid vitamin deficiencies on long-term missions. She hydrated production packs containing the yeast and edible media for incubation to activate yeast growth, then photographed and agitated the packs before stowing them inside a research incubator. The samples will be frozen then returned to Earth to analyse their ability promote crew health and improve the preservation of probiotics.
In other news...
NASA is targeting 7:48 pm EDT on 12 March for the launch of the Crew-10 mission. The launch will carry NASA astronauts Anne McClain as commander and Nichole Ayers as pilot, along with JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Takuya Onishi and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov as mission specialists.
Students from the UCCS and Pikes Peak State College (PPSC) will be sending a fungal experiment to the ISS this spring with the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program (SSEP). “Fungal Bioleaching in Microgravity: Fungal Approaches to Metal Recovery” will explore how microgravity affects fungi’s ability to extract valuable metals from electronic waste, paving the way for sustainable metal recovery in off-world environments.
Read more: Mushroom in space! UCCS and PPSC multi-disciplinary student team sends new experiment to space
This one is curious. A team of DeRidder Junior High School students is developing an experiment that the NASA TechRise Challenge will send into the stratosphere. Their experiment is called “D.E.P.T.H. (Discovering and Exploring Plants Thermal Energy)”, but no more details are given.
Read more: NASA sending DeRidder students’ experiment into stratosphere
Another TechRise Challenge experiment will involve the ingredients for pizza – yeast and four or five basil seeds four or five tomato seeds.
Read more: Space Pizza: New Mexico middle schoolers work with NASA
Lynn Rothschild, a senior research scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center, leads one NIAC project that studies the potential of using mycelium — the root-like part of fungi — to grow habitats on Mars or other worlds.
Read more: How space explorers could grow habitats from fungus
NASA has published the 2025 edition of SPINOFF. You can download the whole thing as a PDF file, or browse individual stories on the website. The astrobotany-related ones include Home-Grown Housing, Cosmic Experiments Make Cosmetic Nutrients, and Toxin-Eating Plants.
NASA Science has an article about lunar regolith – how it differs from Earth soil, and how future explorers may make use of it.
Read more: Leveraging Lunar Regolith to Further Space Exploration
When astrobotanist Rob Ferl flew on Blue Origin's New Shepherd rocket last year, he took some fossils along for the ride. It’s such a fun story, I had to blog about it!
Read more: Rocketing Through Time: How Fossils Travelled from Ancient Earth to the Edge of Space
Top-down cuts to the US federal workforce – via buyouts – and staff shortages resulting from resignations due to Trump’s orders on diversity, gender and remote work are further compounding pre-existing staffing concerns about Nasa’s ability to continue operating the International Space Station (ISS) and execute Trump’s ambitious vision for Moon and Mars exploration, according to sources within the US space agency
Read more: Trump’s anti-DEI executive orders could jeopardize safety of Nasa crews
China has given the green light to a deep-sea research facility be anchored 2,000 metres (6,560 feet) below the surface of the South China Sea. The planned facility –known among the research community as a deep-sea space station – will be used to study cold seep ecosystems, the methane-rich hydrothermal vents that teem with unique lifeforms. Scheduled to be operational by around 2030, it will house six scientists on missions lasting up to a month.
Read more: Beijing approves construction of first South China Sea deepwater ‘space station’
When Polish astronaut Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski launches on the Axiom-4 mission, he’ll be taking along Polish space food developed specially for him: pierogi with cabbage and mushrooms, tomato soup with pasta, vegetable leczo with buckwheat, and an apple crumble.
Read more: Bonus Food Project: Meals from Kielce-Based Company LYOFOOD Are Heading to Space
And I’m including this one because I wrote it! ESA’s Euclid mission has discovered a stunning Einstein ring, in our cosmic backyard.
Read more: Euclid discovers a stunning Einstein ring
Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost is slated to touch down near Mare Crisium, a plain in the northeast quadrant on the near side of the Moon, no earlier than 03:45 EST on 2 March.
Read more: NASA Sets Coverage of Firefly’s First Robotic Commercial Moon Landing
Opportunities
A fully funded PhD project is available with P4S, investigating cell wall responses to altered gravity under controlled growth conditions in duckweed and Arabidopsis, utilising and developing skills. This project, based at the University of Adelaide, will sit within the wider Lunar Effects on Agricultural Flora (LEAF) project, which aims to understand how plants germinate, grow, and respond to unique stressors on the moon’s surface. The successful candidate will work with a vibrant team led by Prof Jenny Mortimer and will collaborate closely with researchers in the US and Australia.
Applications are due by 1st April. It is strongly recommended that you contact Jenny to express your interest in advance of applying (jenny.mortimer@adelaide.edu.au). The project will commence in 2025, before the 14 November.
Learn more: P4S PhD Project
The Moon Village Association is launching a new Lunar Agricultural Sustainability and Toxicology (LAST) Working Group and is looking for members.! This international initiative will explore the future of lunar agriculture and its transformative potential for Earth. The group will address key challenges, including:
· Growing plants in lunar regolith while mitigating heavy metal toxicity risks.
· Developing genetically engineered crops for extreme environments.
· Leveraging lunar agriculture insights to improve food security in developing communities.
The deadline for applications is 28 February.
Apply here: Join the Lunar Agricultural Sustainability and Toxicology (LAST) Working Group!
And the NASA Astrobiology Program has announced a paid internship opportunity for summer 2025 for a qualified graduate student or senior undergraduate student with interests at the intersection of astrobiology and the history of science. This position is based at Mary W. Jackson NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., with flexibility for hybrid or remote work arrangements. The application deadline for the summer 2025 session is February 28, 2025.
Learn more: NASA Astrobiology Strategy Student Historian
Seven to 10 percent of all species on Earth are native to Australia, and more than 80 percent of Australian plants and mammals are not found in nature anywhere else. Yet there’s only one native Australian species widely used for food outside the country: the macadamia nut.
Read more: Australia’s Dazzling Native Ingredients
Bryan Eigenbrodt, associate professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Villanova University, is leading the charge to improve algae’s future as a mass-produced biofuel
Read more: Eigenbrodt Lab Adding Fuel to Algae’s Bioenergy Potential
Using traditional crossbreeding, researchers have created a new strain of rice that produces much less methane, a potent greenhouse gas, when it is grown in flooded fields.
Read more: Rice variant slashes planet-warming methane emissions by 70 per cent
"In the late 1970s when my parents built the house I still live in, there was no forest. The property was a disused cow pasture, full of scrappy grass and weeds. My parents began planting trees before they began the house build, and now – in my lifespan, 47 years – it has grown into a forest."
Read more: I live in a forest my parents planted when I was a child. It’s not too late for you to grow one too
“When a tree falls in the forest, countless critters take note. Dormant fungi within the tree awaken to feast on it, joined by others that creep up from the soil. Bacteria pitch in, some sliding along strands of fungi to get deeper into the log. Termites alert their colony mates, which gather en masse to gobble up wood. Bit by bit, deadwood is decomposed, feeding new life along the way.”
Read more: The teeming life of dead trees
The news of what’s happening to American science communities is troubling. There’s not a great deal I can do – from the other side of The Pond – but I have started a new series of posts exploring women’s contributions to astrobotany. You can find them on the Space Botany website, Mastodon and Bluesky. If you’d like to guest post on the website, let me know!
You can also check out the new Women Refusing to be Erased website, which aims to empower all women/womxn and share the history, important information, current legislation, and the stories of women.
I'll be back in your inboxes next week. Thanks for reading and being part of the Gardeners of the Galaxy community.
Ex solo ad astra,
Emma (Space Gardener)