Plants for space
As NASA prepares for long-duration missions to the Moon and eventually Mars, one of the biggest challenges is ensuring astronauts can produce nutritious food and essential material far from earth. Adelaide University is helping solve that challenge through the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Plants for Space (P4S).
Led by Professor Matthew Gilliham, P4S brings together researchers across plant science, nutrition, engineering, psychology and space law, alongside 36 partners including NASA and the University of California (UC Berkeley and Davis). The Centre is developing technologies that will enable humans to live and work sustainably in space. The goal is to reduce reliance on resupply from Earth and so enabling sustainable human exploration far beyond our home planet.
The Centre is pioneering new plant-growing systems for extreme environments and developing novel food crops such as Wolffia, a highly nutritious, fast growing plant with minimal waste. P4S also focuses on synthetic biology; with UC Davis they are developing new plant-based on demand production systems for medicines, and testing these in space.
Today, P4S and NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre are jointly investigating how plants can support future bioregenerative life support systems, including the production of food, medicines and biomaterials during space missions. The goal is to reduce reliance on resupply from Earth and enable sustainable human exploration far beyond our home planet.
P4S breakthroughs will not only deliver crucial improvements in plant efficiency, productivity, and processing technologies in space – but also here on Earth.
Professor Matthew Gilliham,
Director, Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Plants for Space
Why it Matters
The partnership demonstrates how Australian and US Researchers are working together to solve some of humanity’s most complex challenges, advancing both space exploration and sustainable food production.
