Next year humans are set to return to the Moon for the first time in 55 years with the Artemis III mission, and while the astronauts may spend less than 10 days on the lunar surface, scientists around the world are already preparing the next steps: how to live, grow food, and thrive beyond Earth.
A global consortium of more than 40 scientists from 11 countries and seven space agencies has developed a new roadmap for the plant science and technology breakthroughs needed to make long-term human life on the Moon, and later Mars, possible.
The authors introduce a new “Bioregenerative Life Support System (BLSS) Readiness Level” framework, extending NASA’s crop evaluation scale to assess how effectively plants can recycle air, water, and nutrients in space habitats, to ensure they not only provide nutrition but also other critical life support functions to support sustainable human deep space exploration.
The research builds on discussions from the International Space Life Sciences Working Group Plants for Space Exploration workshop, held during the European Low Gravity Research Association conference in Liverpool, UK, in 2024.
Professor Matthew Gilliham, Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence in Plants for Space at the University of Adelaide, and co-author of the study, is quoted by SciMex as saying:
“This work shows how discoveries made for space can help us build a greener, more sustainable future on Earth. The innovations that will keep astronauts alive on the Moon, such as closed-loop farming, recycling, and resource efficiency, are the same technologies that will transform how we grow food and medicines on demand anywhere on Earth, from inner cities to remote regions, at any time of year.”