NASA is turning to the public to help decide which types of lettuce could one day feed astronauts on long missions. Through the Growing Beyond Earth citizen science programme, run with Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, volunteers are being asked to grow selected varieties at home, with their results compared against crops raised in space-like conditions.
Food packed for extended space missions gradually loses some of its nutritional content, particularly vitamins that are sensitive to time and radiation. Fresh crops can help replace those losses, adding essential micronutrients that pre-packaged meals may lack after months in storage. As well as the health benefits, the presence of something freshly grown is seen as valuable for crew wellbeing, offering a welcome change from the monotony of sealed rations. Lettuce has already proved itself as a candidate: astronauts aboard the International Space Station have harvested and eaten several crops, demonstrating that simple leafy greens can be cultivated reliably in orbit. Its quick germination, compact size, and low resource demands make it an ideal model crop for further testing.
The new study moves some of the testing out of NASA labs and into schools, homes, and community groups. Participants track growth, leaf colour, and yield, while also logging environmental conditions. This produces large amounts of data showing how different strains perform under varying stresses. Previous Growing Beyond Earth trials in U.S. schools have already helped NASA choose crops to send to the ISS, and the current expansion scales that work to a wider audience.
Read more at Orbital Today
