10 Years of Students Helping NASA Grow Space Food with Growing Beyond Earth

Nearly 1,250 middle and high school students from 71 schools around the world joined Fairchild Tropical Botanical Garden for the launch of the Growing Beyond Earth (GBE) Student Discussion with Scientists, marking an inspiring milestone in the program’s 10th anniversary.

The live session, hosted in collaboration with NASA, connected classrooms directly with Dr. Gioia Massa and Trent M. Smith, senior leaders of the Space Cultures Production Team at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Students saw first-hand how their classroom experiences are helping NASA identify and cultivate the best crops for future astronauts on long-duration missions to the Moon and Mars.

“Our students contribute to the real science of NASA,” said one participating teacher. “It’s incredibly motivating for them to know that their data could one day influence what astronauts eat in space.”

Growing Beyond Earth, led by Fairchild Tropical Botanical Garden in Miami, Florida, brings authentic NASA research into classrooms in a way that few science programs can. For more than a decade, the 83-acre botanical garden – renowned for its conservation, education and research programs – has worked hand-in-hand with NASA to advance the understanding of food production in space.

Students use specially designed plant growth chambers to test the performance of different crops in conditions mimicking those of spacecraft. The data they collect is shared with NASA scientists, who use their results to refine ongoing research into space crop production.

Since the program’s launch, more than 120,000 students in more than 800 classrooms have tested more than 250 plant cultivars, including five student-tested crops that have already been grown aboard the International Space Station.

The Growing Beyond Earth project exemplifies the mission of NASA’s Science Activation (SciAct) program, which connects NASA science with people of all ages and backgrounds in ways that activate minds and promote a deeper understanding of our world and beyond, with the ultimate vision: to increase the active participation of learners in the advancement of human knowledge. By engaging students as active participants in cutting-edge research, projects like GBE not only advance NASA’s goals, but also cultivate curiosity, creativity, and confidence in the next generation of scientists and explorers. This year’s GBE Student Launch Chat celebrated this impact, showcasing how student research in classrooms around the world is contributing to the future of space exploration.

“When students see themselves as part of NASA’s mission, they realize that science is not something far away, it’s something they can do,” Dr. Massa said. Hialeah High School teacher Espy Rodriguez said, “It made their [her students] projects matter. I think it gave the kids a real sense of community. We are far away, but we are one. » By growing plants, analyzing data, and sharing their results with NASA, these students are helping humanity prepare for life beyond Earth, proving that the seeds of tomorrow’s discoveries are being planted in today’s classrooms.

GBE is supported by NASA under Cooperative Agreement Number 80NCCS2M0125 and is part of NASA’s Science Activation Portfolio. Learn more about how Science Activation connects NASA science experts, real-world content, and experiments with community leaders to do science in ways that activate minds and promote deeper understanding of our world and beyond: https://science.nasa.gov/learn/about-science-activation/.

www.fairchildgarden.org/gbe