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Growing Beyond Earth®

A partnership between Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden and NASA

To travel or live in space, humans will need to eat! Growing Beyond Earth® (GBE) partners with classrooms around the country to help figure out which plants to grow in space and how best to grow them to feed astronauts. Participating classrooms conduct growth experiments with candidate plant seeds in a growth chamber that mimics the one used on the International Space Station. The data these classrooms report back to Fairchild Tropical Botanical Garden are used to select seed cultivars and establish care guidelines for further testing en route to feeding astronauts on extended missions.

Growing Beyond Earth resources are available in English and Spanish.

Go to Project Website about Growing Beyond Earth®

ages

US Middle & high school teachers & students

division

Biological and Physical Sciences

where & When

Classroom

launched

2015

What you’ll do

  • Grow candidate food crops in your classroom in a growth box that mimics the Vegetable Production System (Veggie) on the International Space Station.
  • Complete a scientist-designed seed and care experiment and report results.
  • Design and conduct an original experiment and present results to NASA personnel during a Virtual Student Research Symposium.

Requirements

  • Time: Initial training; Minutes per day for months
  • Equipment: Project provides growth chamber, seeds, etc. Annual replenishment packages available.
  • Knowledge: Training is required and provided free to teachers.

Get started!

  1. Middle and high school teachers in US, sign up for a professional development training! 
  2. Visit the project website to learn more about what’s involved and sign up for information and trainings. 
  3. Trainings are offered regularly throughout the year.
Photo of a young female student watering seeds in a grow box emitting a pink glow (left) and a female astronaut water seeds on the International Space Station in a grow box that is also emitting a pink glow.
At left, a student grows plants in the classroom in a growth chamber resembling the one use on the International Space Station (ISS). At right, astronaut Peggy Whitson floats by the VEGGIE plant growth chamber on the ISS and tends to its experimental crop of plants.
Credit: Growing Beyond Earth (left), NASA (right)
An illustrated logo that reads Growing Beyond Earth; Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden. The ISS is in orbit around the earth and a green cabbage-like plant sits below the ISS.
NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren, left, and Scott Kelly harvest the first red lettuce grown on the International Space Station as part of the Veggie investigation. This technology and method of growing food could help sustain astronauts by growing the food astronauts need to survive in space and is a critical step on the path to Mars.
NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren, left, and Scott Kelly harvest the first red lettuce grown on the International Space Station as part of the Veggie investigation. This technology and method of growing food could help sustain astronauts by growing the food astronauts need to survive in space and is a critical step on the path to Mars.
Credit: NASA
Illustration of an astronaut standing in a greenhouse on Mars with crops growing under domes, holding a farming tool. Text at bottom reads 'Farmers Wanted.

Learn More

Growing Beyond Earth student teams have helped select 5 of the 20 species that have been tested as food crops on the International Space Station (ISS)! An additional 30 plant candidates grown by students are undergoing final testing at the Kennedy Space Center for suitability to the ISS. In the project’s seventh year, more than 40,000 middle and high school students and their teachers nationwide tested 250 varieties of edible plants for NASA.

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