Gardeners of the Galaxy Mission Report: 20 May 2025
My Top 10 Stories from the world of space plants and gardening. This week we’re peeking into the UF Space Plants lab and an Antarctic greenhouse, and learning what to grow in a nuclear winter!
Hello, Gardeners of the Galaxy! Welcome to this week's Mission Report.
1: A peek into the UF Space Plants Lab
Anna-Lisa Paul and Rob Ferl made history in 2022, when they grew the first ever plants in genuine lunar regolith, collected during the Apollo missions. Now Florida Trend has a great interview with them, revealing some of the challenges they encountered during their experiments. How the normally unflappable Ferl had shaky hands, and how of the tiny wells containing the precious regolith samples refused to absorb water.
‘Paul remembers being at NASA a few years ago to teach a space life training program. The cafeteria was jammed at lunch, and she took an open seat at a table with four men she didn’t know. They were there, she learned, to build a new launch pad.
“It was so fun to talk to them about, ‘What is it that you do every day? And what are kinds of things that are important to you being at Kennedy?’ (I) had never thought about it before. It was just, those pads just magically appear,” she says. “For them, they were very surprised to hear what it was that I was doing … and the science that eventually goes on the pads that they make that enables the whole thing. I can’t do my science without them making the pad.”’
Read more: Seeding Exploration
2: A new space farming symposium
Registrations are now open for the 1st International Symposium on Space Farming (SIAE). This groundbreaking event in Brazil will bring together renowned experts and researchers from both Brazil and abroad to discuss the challenges, innovations, and future prospects of agriculture beyond our planet. Check out some of the special guests featured in the program:
☑️ Ivair Gontijo, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
☑️ Robert J. Ferl, UF Astraeus Space Institute and University of Florida
☑️ Mark Settles, NASA AMES Space Biosciences Research Branch
☑️ Stefania de Pascale, University of Naples Federico II
☑️ Pooja Mathur, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
Date: October 14–16, 2025
Location - São José dos Campos Technological Innovation Park – São José dos Campos, São Paulo, Brazil.
Learn more: SIAE International Symposium on Space Farming
3: The first year of Plants for Space (P4S)
The ARC Centre of Excellence in Plants for Space (P4S) is celebrating its first full year in operation by publishing its first annual report. The PDF file is bursting with space plant goodness, including suborbital duckweed, breeding strawberries for space missions, developing a fully autonomous plant growth system for Axiom Station and sending plants to the Moon. Check out the published results and take a peek at upcoming projects.
Read more: PLACE 2024
4: Treating plants with tardigrade proteins
Jessica Dodson, a senior majoring in biological systems engineering, is working on a research project that bridges the gap between synthetic biology and space exploration. By pre-treating plant seeds with tardigrade proteins to improve their resilience and drought tolerance, her project could prevent crop failures during future long-term space missions — essential to reducing dependency on Earth-based supplies and sustaining human life in space.
Read more: VA Tech Student Research Could Help NASA Grow Food in Space
5: Students growing bamboo in space
Students from Santa Clarita Valley International Charter School worked with the Dream Up to Space program to develop an innovative astrobotany experiment. The members of Team Bamboo set their minds on sending something to the International Space Station (ISS) that would push the boundaries of space agriculture. They chose to study how microgravity affects the germination of Bengal bamboo (Bambusa tulda), because of its rich nutrients and the higher rate of oxygen production, which is 30% higher than trees.
Read more: SCVi students launch agriculture experiment with ISS
6: Will British astronaut Rosemary Coogan walk on the Moon?
British astronaut Rosemary Coogan has been going through spacewalk training in NASA’s Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory at the Johnson Space Center. ESA aims to get Rosemary to the ISS by 2030, and she may one day become the first Briton to walk on the Moon.
Read more: Will this woman be the first Briton to walk on the Moon?
7: A space oven
Jim Sears is working on a space oven called SATED - Safe Appliance, Tidy, Efficient & Delicious – which can bake a zero g lemon cake in 20 minutes. It has already been runner-up in the Deep Space Food Challenge, despite being built from off-the-shelf components Sears ordered from Amazon. Sears hopes SATED will finally get to work in space in the next couple of years. The Smithsonian is already interested in acquiring a prototype. There is some bad news, though. It can’t do popcorn!
Read more: How Boulderite Jim Sears created the world’s first space oven
8: A greenhouse in Antarctica
Atlas Obscura now has an entry on a greenhouse in Antarctica, complete with pictures. Maintained by scientists and support staff volunteering in their free time, the South Pole Growth Chamber can provide South Pole residents with cucumbers, peppers, spinach, tomatoes, and other produce.
Read more: South Pole Growth Chamber
9: A Persimmon tree survived an atomic bomb.
Saplings from a persimmon tree that survived an atomic bomb were planted in an event at the UN headquarters in New York to mark the 80th anniversaries of the US atomic bombings of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the founding of the United Nations. The saplings were grown from seeds collected from a persimmon tree exposed to the blast and radiation from the atomic bomb just 530 metres from the centre of the explosion in Hiroshima.
Read more: Saplings from a tree that survived atomic bombing planted at U.N. headquarters
10: What to grow in a nuclear winter
And if you’ve ever wondered what crops you should grow after a nuclear apocalypse, science has an answer for you. New research suggests that the best crop to grow in today’s climate is peas, which require the least land area to provide the protein and food energy needs of one person (in an urban environment). However, in the event of a nuclear winter, you should opt for 3% carrots and 97% wheat, both frost-tolerant plants.
Read more: This is what you'd eat after the apocalypse, according to science, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0321203
Don’t forget that I regularly post fresh content to my Space Botany website. This week you can read about an intern in the Lunar Receiving Lab who helped to analyse the effect of lunar regolith on plant life.
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)