The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has announced that humans will set foot on the Moon for the first time in more than 50 years during the Artemis III mission, expected to launch in September 2026.
Dubbed 'Lunar Effects on Agricultural Flora (LEAF)', the project will develop an understanding of plants grown for human nutrition and life support on the Moon and beyond.
A consortium of partners has been selected to pioneer this project, including a core group from the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Plants for Space (P4S), headquartered at the University of Adelaide.
Agriculture beyond Earth
Associate Professor of Plant Synthetic Biology at the University of Adelaide and P4S chief investigator, Jenny Mortimer, said the mission would tell us how plants responded in an off-Earth environment, and how well we could build a robust, fully contained environment that allowed them to thrive.
“The data we capture from the mission, both from the lunar surface and what we learn when we analyse the samples upon return, will help us to design the lunar and Martian crops of the future,” Associate Professor Mortimer said.
The project is led by Space Lab Technologies and involves other P4S partners, the University of Adelaide, La Trobe University and NASA Kennedy Space Center, as well as the US Department of Agriculture, University of Colorado Boulder and Purdue University, with additional analysis to be conducted by the P4S node at the University of Western Australia.
Increasing sustainability and efficiency
Experiments are expected to contribute to developing novel plant-based foods and biomanufacturing technologies that assist humans to explore deeper into space than ever before, while also advancing on-Earth sustainability and efficiency.
“LEAF has been made possible by bringing together world-leading skillsets in engineering, plant science, molecular analysis and space logistics – it is a perfect representation of what P4S is here to do, to assist in delivering a new frontier for humanity,” said P4S director and University of Adelaide Professor, Matthew Gilliham.
“The learnings and technologies we gain by growing plants in a completely closed loop, as we must do in space, will provide new options for improving sustainable plant production and processing here on Earth.”
Head of the Australian Space Agency, Enrico Palermo, said the selection of Plants for Space involvement in Artemis was a major vote of confidence in Australia’s space sector.
“This is another example of the cutting-edge space research and innovation happening in Australia and the demand there is for us to contribute to generation-defining international missions,” Palermo said.