Growing Beyond Earth

Growing Beyond Earth® (GBE) is a classroom-based citizen science program designed to advance NASA research on growing plants in space and to inspire the next generation of explorers. This is a global effort led by the U.S., with multiple mission milestones, involving international and commercial partners and citizen scientists, like yourself. As humans expand into space farther from Earth, the ability to grow sustainable food crops is a solution to a major challenge of long-duration, deep-space missions.

Growing Beyond Earth research directly supports NASA’s goals of feeding astronauts on the International Space Station, Moon, and Mars by providing Crop Readiness Level-1 and -2 data to Dr. Gioia Massa (Senior Scientist), Trent Smith (Research Advisor), and their Space Crop Production team at NASA Kennedy
Space Center.

There are many science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) challenges and solutions related to food production in space that have applications on Earth. Growing Beyond Earth is also advancing technologies for growing plants in urban, indoor, and other resource-limited settings.

Established in 2015 as a partnership between Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Science Mission Directorate, Growing Beyond Earth is now underway in more than 500 middle and high schools from 48 U.S. states and 11 countries. GBE is unique in its focus on real scientific research, enabling student community scientists to actively contribute data toward NASA mission planning.

Each classroom receives a Fairchild-designed plant habitat analogous to the Vegetable Production System (Veggie) on the International Space Station (ISS). Fairchild and NASA scientists train teachers to conduct GBE experiments with students and share their results with NASA