Gardeners of the Galaxy Mission Report: 24 June 2025

My Top 10 Stories from the world of space plants and gardening. This week we've got plants for the Moon and for Mars, fungi to mine asteroids & people missing the point about space exploration.

Jun 24, 2025

1: ALEPH irradiates plants for Moon experiments.

The Australian Lunar Experiment Promoting Horticulture (ALEPH) team is finalising a prototype designed to carry plants and seeds to the lunar surface, to investigate how they respond to the low levels of gravity on the Moon.

A prototype of the bio-module – designed to keep the plants warm and protect them from the vacuum of space – has been built at RMIT University in Melbourne and is undergoing testing to ensure it can cope with the high temperatures and vibrations of a rocket launch.

The project has also exposed seeds and plants to radiation at the Centre for Accelerator Science nuclear lab near Sydney. They received doses equivalent to spending four days, eight days and five years on the lunar surface.

The mission lead, Lauren Fell, said “Life is very resilient, and we have chosen species on purpose that have a lot of resilience – lichens for example have been shown to survive outside the International Space Station.”

The plan is for the bio-module to catch a lift to the Moon on an Intuitive Machines lander currently scheduled to launch in March or April 2026, and for ALEPH to be just the first in a series of missions.

2: Brazilian chickpeas launch again

In April, I reported on the Brazilian chickpeas that flew into space aboard Blue Origin’s NS-31 suborbital mission, courtesy of the Rede Brasileira de Agricultura Espacial (Brazilian Space Farming Network), a partnership between Embrapa and the Brazilian Space Agency (AEB).

Now students from the Federal University of ABC (UFABC, Brazil) have sent chickpea seeds aloft on a rocket as part of the International Rocket Engineering Competition (IREC) organised by the Experimental Sounding Rocket Association (ESRA). Each year, student teams from around the globe design, build, test and launch rockets that meet strict payload and altitude requirements, with target altitudes ranging from 3,000 to nearly 14,000 meters. The event accommodates rockets of various propulsion types, including solid, liquid, and hybrid engines.

According to Embrapa researcher Alessandra Fávero, the idea came about during the Space BR Show in 2024. “Space Farming Brazil also has the mission of bringing elementary, high school and university students closer to researchers in space agriculture in Brazil and abroad,” she says. “In this way, we encourage new generations to believe in the potential of Brazilian research for the benefit of society”.

During the event, which took place in Texas, USA, the chickpeas seeds – of the BRS Aleppo cultivar – launched on a rocket about three metres high, has a solid fuel engine. It was programmed to carry a payload of approximately one kilogram to an altitude of three kilometres. According to a press release from ESRA, the team achieved first place in the “10K SRAD Solid Motor” category.

Source: Carga com sementes de grão-de-bico será lançada em foguete da UFABC Rocket Design em competição internacional

3: Duckweed for a Martian CELSS

A team of aerospace engineering graduates took top honours in NASA’s 2025 Revolutionary Aerospace Systems – Academic Linkage (RASC-AL) Competition Forum for their project, “Dynamic Ecosystems for Mars Environmental Control and Life Support Systems (ECLSS) Testing, Evaluation, and Reliability (DEMETER)”.

The proposed two-year mission would demonstrate the transfer of plants to Mars, the propagation of plants in an enclosed capsule on the Martian surface, the assimilation of Martian carbon dioxide into edible biomass while producing oxygen, and the phytoremediation of wastewater using duckweed.

4: Axiom-4 experiments get a refresh

NASA, Axiom Space, and SpaceX are now targeting 02:31 EDT (07:31 BST) tomorrow, 25 June for the launch Axiom-4. Meanwhile, ISRO is working with Axiom space to refresh their ‘time sensitive experiments’.

5: Interstellar Labs imagines a future full of life.

6: Educational videos on plants in space

The Plants4Space team have released more of their educational videos about growing plants in space:

7: Space cynicism

Screenshot from the YouGov app, showing the results of a poll. The question asked was “How likely or unlikely do you think it is that there will be humans living on the surface of the moon or Mars by the year 2040?”. A horizontal bar chart shows that 2% of people voted Very likely, 10% Fairly likely, 27% Fairly unlikely and 49% Very unlikely. The remaining 12% opted for Don’t know. — A YouGov poll suggests that most people don’t think humans will be living on the Moon or Mars by 2024.

SpaceX Starship 36 exploded during a routine static fire test last week, while preparing for the 10^th flight test. SpaceX is known for its fast-track development process, which involves a series of very public (and frequently fiery) failures. With the Falcon 9, that ultimately led to a very successful reusable launch vehicle. We’ll have to wait and see what the future holds for Starship.

There are plenty of people who think that billionaire-funded space companies are environmentally damaging and pointless, and that the prospect of humans living on other planets is a hopeless fantasy. However, space exploration plays a crucial role in solving problems here on Earth.

8: Could fungi mine gold on asteroids?

A very colourful photo of a Petri dish in which interlocking spheres of green fungi are sitting against a magenta background. — Fungi growing in a Petri dish. Image credit: CSIRO.

Researchers at CSIRO have discovered a fungus that can incorporate gold particles as it grows. Fusarium oxysporum can dissolve and deposit the precious metal in its surroundings. It could lead to big changes in the way we mine for gold – on Earth and beyond.

9: Herbaria, satellites, plant health & biodiversity

Jeannine Cavender-Bares, professor of organismic and evolutionary biology and director of the Harvard University Herbaria, is leading an international project using satellites, drones, and fieldwork to study plant function, health, and diversity.

Leaves reflect and absorb a unique pattern of light, to create a “spectral fingerprint”. Spectral biology uses these fingerprints to detect identify species, assess plant and detect chemical signatures.

Extracting spectral data from the dried plant specimens stored in herbaria can help scientists to track changes over time and monitor biodiversity patterns.

10: Designing habitats for life underwater (H4)

There are some places on Earth that are as hostile to explorers as outer space, including the ocean depths. British company DEEP is developing habitats to allow longer-duration aquatic missions.

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Don’t forget that I regularly post fresh content to my Space Botany website. This week you can read about a British experiment to grow tea plants in regolith simulants.

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)

Gardeners of the Galaxy Mission Report