Horticulture Innovators

Special Feature: Dr. Heath Mills and Dr. Laura E. Fackrell - Horticulture Goes to Space

• Texas A&M Horticultural Sciences Department

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Dr. Heath Mills (Co-I): Dr. Heath J. Mills is an extreme environment microbial
ecologist with academic degrees from Duke University and the Georgia Institute of Technology and has held two faculty positions at Texas A&M University and the University of Houston. As the current Chief Scientific Officer for Rhodium Scientific, he leads initiatives to expand terrestrial and space research capacities into the advanced commercial biotechnology sector. Dr. Mills has been Principal Investigator and Co-Investigator on over 20 International Space Station science and engineering missions. Recently, Mills is on the Advisory Board for GEN-Space, Schull Institute, and was appointed to the ISS National Laboratory User Advisory Committee as the
Chair of the Technology Development Subcommittee.

Dr. Laura E. Fackrell (PI): Dr. Laura E. Fackrell is the Astrobotany and Agritech
Department Lead at Rhodium Scientific. Dr. Fackrell is a geochemist and geomicrobiologist specializing in space biology and astrobiology applications. Her current research focuses on advancing sustainable agriculture and related biotechnologies for both Earth and space. Dr. Fackrell has more than seven years of research experience in space agriculture and has led multiple publications in regolith simulant development and best practices for regolith-based agriculture research. She has designed several regolith simulants for agricultural research. As a postdoctoral fellow at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, Dr. Fackrell led publications on designing applications for agriculture, waste processing, and recovery, and
analyzing related microbiomes for closed off-world systems

Rhodium Scientific: https://www.rhodiumscientific.com/

SPEAKER_03

Audi, welcome to Horticulture Innovators, the podcast series where we will explore impactful innovations in horticulture. I'm Amit Dingra, your host. I'm a professor and head of the Department of Horticultural Sciences at Texas Air University. In each episode, we'll explore the inspiring stories of the pioneers who are contributing to sustainability, wellness, and food security through their amazing work in horticulture. Ari and welcome to another episode of Horticulture Innovators. And we have some special guests today, right out of the space. Well, actually.

SPEAKER_01

So I request you to just introduce yourself and we'll get on with our conversation. Hi, I'm Dr. Laura Faperrill, Laura Spine. Hi. And uh Heath Mills, Dr. Heath Mills, former Texas AM faculty members. That's great. Wonderful. And you're with Rhodium Scientific. Uh, what does the company do? So, Rhodium Scientific is a commercial service provider, implementation partner to the International Space Station. But overall, we're actually a biotech company, and we're the first space biotech company to really take advantage of the space environment to produce new products, new missions, and do a lot of science in the space environment. You know, it's it's uh, you know, in this uh podcast, we always feature folks who have created innovations in horticulture. And this is coming from the other side of it. Um, I'm really excited because I I think uh, as you were saying earlier, you know, space is we've always thought of growing plants in space. I mean, just that concept. What what what trends are you starting to observe now uh in in this kind of as a biotech company, but because you have the front seat, right?

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. Well, I think one of the things that we've done, like you said, a lot of plants in space. That's a very interesting topic, but we've done that quite a few decades now. We know we can grow a plant in space. But the next step is really to go from can we grow a plant in space to let's do production of plants in space, so horrible in space. Right.

SPEAKER_01

Or yeah. And what's what's interesting is when we started, when Rhodium started moving into the space environment, it was a terrestrial company, which is kind of interesting to say. Uh, but when it started as a terrestrial company, it was focused on lab optimization, looking at ways of developing a product out of that science environment and really the business of science. We started doing the research in space in the biotech side, and we focused on biomanufacturing, regenerative medicine, pharmaceuticals. And then as we started moving more into and then deep into different areas, working with different universities, then the agritech side came in. And that's where we met Laura and brought Laura over from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, JPL, to come in and run our agtech program. Because, like she just said, plants in space have been going, but switching that to production, switching it to something that is actually sustainable as opposed to, yay, you grew a plant, to now you're growing something functional. That's a huge shift right now at the time. I think there is so much to be discussed, but before I go there, I know you know our audience is also students, uh, parents looking at uh for their kids, what can they do after they get a degree in horticultural sciences, or why should they get a degree in horticultural sciences? I just wanted to hear your backgrounds as well. How did you come to rodeo?

SPEAKER_04

So I actually started not in space.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_04

Um, but I used to. You started good in space, more words. Um I'm a geologist by training. Okay. And so I um into and geology is a similar in compoter culture. It's like, what do you do with a geology degree? That's often a question because we'll get um but there um but I took a class and we went on a field trip and I realized I could do science outside, like in camping, and like I get paid to go camping, be outside, and do all these wonderful things, and I can do this really cool science. And so that made me fall in love with geology. And so I kind of went from there and I just became fascinated by all the different extreme environments that we occur. And um, so I did my master's with hot springs, um, and looking at how microbes live in these acidic springs and then are able to do really cool things and uh cycle nitrogen and all these different, I can go very deep, but this is the Gary Mollus guy finding uh tack polymerase for BCR in springs as well. Yeah, um, and so I was able to do that, and then I that the most extreme environment I could think of would be the space environment. And so that I wanted to go come back and like let's do that. And so then I decided to come back and get my PhD and I was like, let's do it in space. And I was able to talk to my advisor, and that started, and so that led to uh several postdocs and eventually to rhodium and meeting you at a conference and saying, let's do this.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah. And so for me, it's been uh a wild run of different universities being at different spots, but always focused on I have a big need to understand evolution and change and what affects biological systems. And I tracked that through applied microbiology at Georgia Tech, uh, switched to oceanography from Florida State, was in the oceanography department here at Texas AM is my first faculty position for a number of years, but always looking at that extreme environment, what allows life to exist and persist in and around the edges of what we know. That exploration side, that what is in that realm of is it possible? And so did a lot of research uh missions at sea, submersible dimes to the bottom of the ocean. I've gotten five dimes to the bottom of the ocean. Wow, and in some of those missions, it was hey, this person that's now in space was on this sub a year ago. Um, I gave a talk and to at Johnson Space Center and told them that, hey, I've sampled all these environments all over the planet, and I've done all these things. And somebody in the back of the room said, Yeah, but you've only worked on one planet. Oh cute. So, but then that just that overall thread of exploration, um trying to understand the unknown. And I think that's what I enjoyed about being a faculty is that I could explore new and novel ideas. And now that's the fun part with Rhodium, is now we get to focus on the science, focus on those interesting questions. And so as you start looking at your careers and developing your career, it's find out what you like. Really do a deep dive in yourself to understand that. Understand what you don't like. If you don't like being stuck indoors, you like doing something outside, track that way. And that's kind of what I was fortunate enough to be able to continue. Well, I I'll have a little punny statement here, it's not funny. But the thing is, I think uh horticulture is really ready to take the mooch shot because I think uh correct me if I'm wrong, while we're enjoying plants in space, what we really need to do, as you said, production, but we have two pieces to the equation. One is the journey, right? To somewhere and then getting there. And for the journey part, I mean, what type of projects? Like, do you have like a coolest project you want to talk about with plants that you're working on? Anything coming?

SPEAKER_04

I don't might be hard to it's hard to choose.

SPEAKER_01

Well, I think talk a little bit about space tomatoes.

SPEAKER_04

Oh that was a really fun one. Um, and so uh we worked with uh a group at University of California Riverside, and they used uh some of our flight chambers to apply some tomato plants. And these are tomato plants that were specifically designed to grow in small spaces, and so they were called space tomatoes. And then they actually flew in space and became space tomatoes. Right.

SPEAKER_01

So the acronym got confusing. You know, small space, but it's outer space. Yeah, it works both ways.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, and so that provides a lot of different innovations for for the journey. So you have things that you have pick and eat fruit, so things that you can grow without having too much processing in space, but then it also is the reverse for those are also things that can be beneficial for controlled environments of earth.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and I think one key aspect on that that is when you're saying what's the innovation is that going forward, going out to the moon, longer durations and maintaining food supplies in those areas, thinking outside the box, what is different about that environment and what are the constraints that we are just adapted to here? One of the things that these plants did, the tomato plants did, is they grew on three-hour light cycles. And so modifying the light cycle may be beneficial when you no longer have a true day night. Yeah. Why are you stuck to 24 hours? And so this is some of those innovations where now you think outside of the constraints that, well, I've always grown it for 24 hours. Why? Well, because I'm on Earth. We're not there anymore. So maybe other things change. Well, photo period is connected with gravity in a way. And now that you're getting into a gravity-free space space, and then you are uh not constrained by that. So that's really fascinating. I mean, so you're thinking outside of the box while trying to grow a plant uh plant in a box, right, in a completely different context. That's really fascinating. And you know, I think on a space trip, it's not like you have abundance of resources, water, and other materials. I think there's a lot of recycling that needs to be done as well. So, how do you really grow a tomato in space? I mean, where did the water come from?

SPEAKER_04

Well, it depends on where you are. But on the moon, there's ice on the moon, there's ice on Mars, um, there's water in minerals. There's lots of places you can extract water, but it's limited. It's not like Earth where you have oceans of water, although part of like usable water.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Um and so you can really do that. But those innovations that allow you to get that water out and then reuse that water effectively could also be useful for Earth where there are places where we have droughts and things.

SPEAKER_01

So this is really fascinating. And and do you think that, you know, going back to so so we have a lot of plant breeders who are developing new tomatoes or new uh melons or peppers, uh, you know, dwarf grapes or something like that. So do you think genetics will have a role to play in a big time in this case? Uh white spoon. Absolutely. And you're in an environment. So when we say the space environment, everybody thinks microgravity and loss of gravity and then it's not. We really like to characterize the space environment as both the microgravity component and the radiation component. And so putting those two together is a perfect combination for rapid mutation, rapid adaptation. And those changes then can either be temporary through the epigenomic changes and shifts, the phenotypic shifts, but it can also be hard-coded within a genetic mutation. Yeah. And so if you're looking at developing new varietals, new species, new traits, adaptation to a novel, new stressed environment, mutations in that novel environment can provide you something you've never seen before. Yeah. And so that's one of the hallmarks of any mission that we do. And we talk to program managers, to faculty, to students, to investors, to whoever is that so what do you think is going to happen on this mission? Well, it's going to be different. Yeah. It's going to change. The likelihood of something flying and coming back and nothing happens, something's going to happen. And the individuals and the teams and the researchers that are more adept at understanding the molecular shifts, those are the ones that get to understand the why something changed. And that why can lead to novel adaptations, novel new traits that can, and this is the key part that a lot of what NASA's looking at now, and also from AgriLife here, and the researchers to think here is it's great to develop something in space. Yeah. But show that transition back to Texas, back to a terrestrial environment. Helping eight astronauts on the space station is cool. Yeah. There's eight billion people here. Yeah. So let's look at that back translation, that backflow of information. You know, that's a fascinating and a very realistic connection because if you go back into space travel, uh, so many new innovations are really helping us today. Of course, I think of GPS as one of them. Right. But I know there are several other things. I guess the diving suits came from there as well. Yeah. So there would be LED lights. LED lights, of course. Okay, there are. It's beyond just velcro and tank. Yeah. You know, you were saying something very important just now is about the genetic species as well. How do we do that? And I think there are examples about um the cherries in Japan, I believe, which started flowering earlier. So it changed the flowering time. A cherry seed, if you plant it, it uh will flower in about seven years. But I think that started flowering within the first two years, which really changes the, if you think about it, it changes the economy of an orchard. You don't have to wait for seven years for something to flower and be productive. And so, I mean, these kind of things can have real uh transformative effects in that process as well. So, in terms of the one of the biggest examples of uh you know application of understanding of plant biology here is which pertains to gravity, is a lot of people don't know that plants sense gravity. Right. And it it happens in my favorite organelle, which is the plastid or the chloroplast. Correct.

SPEAKER_03

You want to share something about that?

SPEAKER_01

Because I think I found that so cool when I learned it for the first time in grad school. I'm like, whoa. I remember the paper came out that that's how plants sense gravity. Right.

SPEAKER_04

Well, and there's a lot we are still learning about how that too. Yeah, there's different ways that plants can sense gravity. I think one is those graduals, the statoliths growth, and um the starch grains that fall to the bottom of that organelle allow the plant to say this is it's slightly heavier, it's not at the bottom. But when you get to space, like that doesn't settle. And so then it confuses and there's confusion as to where the bottom is.

SPEAKER_01

I mean, it would be so cool if we could figure out the genetics of that and then just say you're always going to be directed towards planet Earth or wherever you are, so that there is some uh, I guess, artificial well, and that's the fascinating part because it's not um grammatropism, as we call it, it's not the only tropis, right?

SPEAKER_04

So plants can also detect light, which can help make up for. And so in space, we can balance different tropisms to make up for the lack of one tropis.

SPEAKER_01

So tropism would be movement towards a particular stimulus. So you've got ignotropism when you're touching the plants, or phototropism, light, or gravitropism towards gravity. Right. Well, that brings me to let's go to Mars. Let's do it. Let's do it.

SPEAKER_04

Right.

SPEAKER_01

You'll see in a while. Yeah. Well, the big part is Of course when the movie Martian came out, and uh thank you, Matt Damon, for for growing potatoes up there. That was great.

SPEAKER_03

So that was a great, great poster child for horticulture.

SPEAKER_01

People don't know that's horticulture. That's a whole other story. But hopefully we're changing that. That's right. But how realistic what was shown up? I know I'm sure you've answered this question multiple times. And how realistic was that picturization? Although when we were looking at mobile phones and uh tablets and Star Trek, it's happening today. So tricorders, tricorders.

SPEAKER_04

I mean, it's more realistic than sometimes sci-fi can be. Yeah, but there is definitely some things that were also not tracked as well.

SPEAKER_01

So uh there's there's hazards involved with working with soils, with soil sediments, with uh regolith. Um, and so we the the deeper you get into and the more granular you get with what actually he was doing. Yeah, there's some issues. There's really some issues. But yes.

SPEAKER_04

But the overall concept was actually not too far off.

SPEAKER_01

When you said the word regolith, and I we like to always kind of unpeel this onion and a particular pond, like whenever we use a term like that. Can you explain what that is, please?

SPEAKER_04

So regolith, the official definition would be the unconsolidated outer portion of a planet. What that means is it's the stuff, it's like it's uh soil is one aspect of regolith. And so Earth actually has regolith too, technically. Um, but it's just those the the layer of material on the planet that's loose and flows around. And so it can include dust, it includes small rocks or pebbles or things that would be in motion and be active.

SPEAKER_01

And so what is it composed of? And do we have regoliths from other planets on uh on this planet? We do, actually. So if I want to read that so if I want to do an experiment, can I get like I need Mars regoliths? Can I get that?

SPEAKER_04

That one we don't have yet.

SPEAKER_01

Okay. Which one do we?

SPEAKER_04

We have some for the moon. Oh, wow. We have some asteroid regoliths. Okay. Um, and Mars regolith is hopefully in the soon future.

SPEAKER_01

So for the people who do experiments, because I hear uh one of my colleagues, Dr. Wallace, is working with a colleague in Oregon, try to grow potatoes in regolith. And we have another student over here, uh Jess Atkins, she's trying to grow chickpeas in Regolet. So how what what are they using?

SPEAKER_04

They're using simulants. Simulit. And so we know enough about those regoliths and those materials because we've had rovers, we've had lots of sampling that they can send us data back, and we can use that and take similar rocks and materials from Arch and make a simulant soil or a simulant regular. Yes.

SPEAKER_01

I don't know, I don't know enough about space, but do we have all the minerals that are found on Mars or other things on Earth as well?

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, yeah. They occur the same laws of physics apply.

SPEAKER_01

Because we are all made of stardom.

SPEAKER_04

Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_01

That's reasonable. But one thing that's interesting is that we can reproduce later regulars. Yeah, some are better than others, and you're gonna need to use with that. But it's the overall environment. Are we ready to grow something on the moon? Okay, well, we can simulate the regular. Can we simulate the red the radiation? Not really, but yeah, if the plant is growing where the humans are, then we know that we need to keep the radiation levels down low enough that the humans are okay. And so you want to get it into a shielded environment. Okay, so you can get close to what the radiation is there, the watering, the nutrients, everything else that you would provide to that growing plant, we can do. Yeah, the one that we can't do is the gravity component. Yeah, yeah. And now that is a and it seemed to be, and okay, it's a small, it's one factor in it, but what we're seeing, and like what you were just saying, plants detect gravity. When gravity is no longer there, what does the plant do? Well, if it's lunar and it's one-sixth, is that enough? Or is it not enough? The moon of Mars is about one-third. Is that enough? Yeah, that fractional gravity environment. We know what life does at one G. All life that we know currently has been at one G. Over the last 80 years, life has finally seen what zero G looks like. 12 people have seen what later gravity looks like. Yeah, but what do we do with plants in that environment? And anybody that grows any type of plant in any type of environment knows they need to look at the entire environment to understand what the production rates are like. You need to simulate and you need to get as close to that environment as possible. And the best way to do it is to be there.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

To really simulate what West Texas is like, you probably need to go to West Texas. And so you can do a lot of the simulations, but in the end, you got to be there. You got to be there. And that's the thing that now is moving forward. And we've even done some experiments on station right now on the ISS right now, where we're spinning microbial samples, fungal samples at lunar Martian gravities, where we're seeing changes, we're seeing different production from what we see at zero, what we see at one. And so assuming that, and this is where with Matt Damon with the potatoes, assuming that growth cycles are going to be the same as on Earth, production rates are going to be the same, maybe even the potato looks the same.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

That's part of the I they did a lot of science, they did a lot of deep dive into and making sure it was as close as possible. Yeah, that's just one of those we don't know. We don't know why. As you were saying this, you know, and this is a physics question, I'm not a physicist, but isn't everything in in the known universe under some impact of gravity?

SPEAKER_04

Well, um microgravity technically is 10 to the negative of six gravity, but that's essentially zero.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, so yeah. So on ISS there is a fractional very, very, very ridiculously small. But that's the whole point. That's what thing we tried to do with the DARPA program is to look at is gravity a continuum? Does biology detect it over a gradient, or is it a threshold? Because if we saw a threshold response, then if it's in between moon and Mars, then everything we do on the ISS preps us to go to the moon, and all the numbers that we have with that could go to the home. If it's a gradient, then that means each one is different. And so now you have to, and just like with the amount of water, with the amount of light, with the amount of salt in the environment, the pH, you have to dial in the gravity component, and each one of those are different. Those are fundamental questions that we don't know that actually have huge impacts on how many how many plants do you need to bring with you? If production rates are completely different, you may need 10 times more or 10 times less. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Or do you engineer plants that are specifically designed for those environments? That's where you get biophysicists into play because they can actually look at the physics of how the without going to the uh last question on space dial.

SPEAKER_01

Okay. I don't even know how to formulate it. So I'm going to I have a question. How long has a plant has been Grown under zero G, how long has it gone? Because I'm just curious, how does the water move then? I mean, I know there are proteins that are actively utilizing energy to move things around. I mean, at least on planet Earth. But I'm just curious what happens at zero G, of course.

SPEAKER_04

Well, that's where the physics changes pretty drastically, right? And so without the gravity, you don't have that convection or the movement of things back and forth. And so suddenly capillary forces and other things become the dominant force rather than those things. And so that completely changes how fluids behave.

SPEAKER_01

Right. But long-term growth studies in space have been few and far between. Yes. Most of the US research was based for multiple decades on shuttle missions. Okay. And shuttle missions were eight, 10, 12 days.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And so that you were constrained to 12 days in space. That was it. So ISS started obviously in 2000, really started getting more research done at the end of the near 2010 and that side. So we've only been roughly about two decades of truly operational in the ISS. Before that, star um Star Lab, um, um Mir, there were plants that were grown there. There was different studies that were grown there. Um, the problem with or Skylab, I'm not saying Starlab was wrong. Skylab, something was wrong, which fell from the Yeah, you don't get to add to that one out. But having the numbers of samples. So did they grow a plant for a long time? Yeah. Yes. How many did they grow? A plant for a long time. And so getting into the statistical significance for something that would be a study that would survive academic peer review, reviewer number two, enough information to really make it a powerful statement. We haven't had that opportunity for about just the last decade. And so these are the questions that now need to be asked. What if we go to seed? What if that seed gets replanted? What if that goes to seed? Yeah. What if that gets to be replanted? Because we know from terrestrial horticulture, it takes a while to adapt to a new environment. You must go multiple generations. So these are the type long-term studies that need to be done. Yeah. Yeah. To really start answering some of those A, fundamental but B functional questions that then can you continue to grow potatoes on Mars? Yeah. But all that.

SPEAKER_04

And those really target, like that transition from just wearing plants in space to doing production in space, because you have to go generationally and scaling. And so that's all those different features that mark that shift.

SPEAKER_01

Well, so this is really uh segue into the next sort of set of questions. So what are the challenges today that are stopping us from production? I know that a lot of people are researching these things, but what are some of the variables that not just plant biologists or horticulturists or folks who work in molecular biology or epigenetics or biophysics can think of? But what are the constraints? What's stopping us from, say, growing a crop of uh tomatoes or grapes or strawberries in space? Yeah. Well, unfortunately, space is limited in space.

SPEAKER_04

Yes.

SPEAKER_01

That's what the thing is. Well, not only it's a small vehicle. Yes. So size is one. Okay. Um, traditionally, and this is what when I was faculty here at AM, I was advised not to apply to NASA funding because if I wanted to do something in space, it would take five, six, seven years. Yeah. And I had a tenure package that was due before that. So it was probably not a good idea. So timelines to do these, and so then to do iterative missions with long timelines have just not been possible. So now, with especially looking at agriculture and a built environment, we're looking at miniaturizing production plans. And where from one thing that we've done and really changed the industry is our flight times from the time we kick off a mission to we are in space is about four to six months. So now you can get iterative missions with a master's degree. And so that now opens up new ways of doing the research. Now, ISS, and there's a lot of news, ISS is going to go in the ocean at some point right now. Thankfully, it's now been moved out to 2032, and we'll see how far out it goes. But there are new stations that are coming online. Okay. Those new stations that are coming online are going to start to answer the space question. They're looking at committing more resources to larger scale products. Will we be able to grow a field of tomatoes? No, but we'll can we get past those numbers. Traditionally, six to six to twelve means the win. Last summer we flew 24. So slowly those numbers are starting to get up where you can have triplicates, you can have multiple varieties. How many tomatoes were you want to produce?

SPEAKER_04

We were in the seatling stage.

SPEAKER_01

We had the timeline on that one. So there was a third.

SPEAKER_04

But they didn't transplant them when they came back and he got tomatoes off of them.

SPEAKER_01

Oh you know, I think you just mentioned something. So there's been a big shift in perhaps the business model. And I was just curious, how did Rhodium come into being? Obviously, this is a big gap. As you were saying, nobody can do the research, and you had to come up with a new business model right to do this. How did that happen? So it's it's it's actually an interesting story on it, and it really fits to coming in, thinking outside the box. So our founder and CEO, Olivia Gomez Holsehouse, founded the company in 2014 in San Antonio as a terrestrial company. So looking at ways of optimizing workflow through a lab, through a science endeavor to not just produce and complete a project, but to go to a product and to look at ways of standardizing those procedures, optimizing those procedures, and getting a better product out of what was being done in the lab. She had a contract at Johnson Space Center, traveling from San Antonio over to Houston, going over there and meeting some of the people from Johnson Space Center, meeting one individual that she didn't know had an amazing history in space, Mr. George Abbey. And George, if you look him up, he's known as the most influential person in U.S. space history. Uh his book, The Astronaut Maker, was because he hand-selected all the astronauts from 78 to 2003. The original shuttle crew uh that was him. He was the one that was tapped by Clinton to go up on the hill and get the space station funded. So this was his legacy, and Olivia had no idea who he was. And so he was a friend. He was somebody that would talk to her and they would share some experiences when she was at Houston. And finally, after a number of years, he said to her, He goes, You know, what you do in the labs here and if inland around the US would be very valuable on my space station. Well, I mean, he can save my space station. Yeah. And so Olivia was like, space isn't for me. This isn't for me. This is that's sci-fi, that's this. And so then George found the right button and said, Well, you're not a real scientist unless you work in space. Yeah. Wow. And she said, she said, I'll show, I'll show you, George. And so, but that's but what it made her do was really look at, okay, what is happening in this environment? Yeah, what is happening there? And she bluntly came up with, okay, why isn't there more product? Why isn't more things coming like what we were saying before about what's come from space? Well, every mission, everything that goes up, there's hundreds of experiments that go up, there's hundreds of experiments that came down, and we don't hear a lot about those products. And so, what NASA's known for is Tang and Velcro and LED lights is a much better one, but less people know about it. Yes. All the other advances from the AgTech side, from the RegenMed side, from the they're not well publicized. And so then why? Well, what she saw was the timelines were a problem. The number of samples were a problem. The taking science away from the bench, changing it into a completely different device, a device that is so foreign to the lab that now a 20-year researcher has to change their entire protocol, their entire research, and none of what happens in space is applicable to their 20 years of science. That's a problem. That's not how you do science. And so, whenever we do field science and we go out in the field, you try and do things as close to the way you do with your lab because now you can correlate what you see in the field to what's in the lab. And so she took that model, non-traditional space, arab space model, applied a science first perspective to it. And that's why we're flying hundreds of samples and doing iterations, and we do it like you would do it in your lab here. That's that's the difference. That's fascinating. So this is really great. Uh, this is a great story how it came to be. Are there other companies like this in space or have they come up since then? So, overall, the access points that we have to the International Space Station were labeled as a commercial service provider and an implementation partner. Yeah, those are with agreements to the ISS National Lab and with NASA. There are 13 companies currently in the U.S. that are operating that have the same access points. We are the only one that's a science. The other 12 are engineer companies, they're payload developers. They develop hardware that then scientists can utilize. We're the ones that develop the science and then match it to the best hardware. So that gives us, and those 13 companies have dedicated access points, dedicated rides to the International Space Station, and that's where the time comes in. We now know that we can watch with the next vehicle because we have those access points. That's amazing. I think you're really you've cracked open the space for really this aspect. Uh, if we are going to go to space, we need to do that. I'm just surprised that uh the companies from you know the mosque companies that he's established, they're not going in the store. Are they also getting into this? Or they're they're building big vehicles. Yeah. Okay. So that's so right. You have to have the Fords, you have to have the Chevrolets, you have to have those that are building the vehicles. Yes. Their focus is on the vehicles. We're our focus is what's in the back of the guys, the cargo. Yeah, yeah. That side is where we are focused. Understood. And so there is a synergy between them. We ride up on SpaceX vehicles, um, we're from the crew dragons to cargo dragons to Northrop Roman Cygnus vehicles. So we use their vehicles, we're glad they're there, and we're really happy there's more coming online because the more vehicles online means more opportunities, means we can get to space quicker. So there is a synergy between them, but we're totally focused in the parents. You know, space also represents. I mean, I grew up in India learning about space missions and what was amazing happening. And it was always a reflection of we may have our differences here, but when we leave the stratosphere, uh, I hope I use the correct term. Then we are a human race. Right. We are trying to explore beyond our environment. And that's the fascinating unifying factor that we used to hear about in what's happening in Skylabs or what's happening at the space station from multiple countries coming to that. That's a fascinating story of sort of human enterprise, where we want to go. And actually, you want to come back to the economics of all of this. Right now, obviously, it is not easy for every country to get involved, right? But besides the US, are what's happening in other countries? Are they uh, I don't want to say ahead of us, but what aspects are they focusing on? Right. So it's amazing to look at the number of countries that currently have space programs. And we get contacted from many different African nations, South American nations. We work with obviously through Europe, um, Australia. We have a four-year, five-year program in Australia. So each one of these countries are developing space programs. Not all of them have launch capabilities, but they're all looking at ways of utilizing space to better their local economy, their local population, something in the and develop in their country. Because there's two aspects to doing work in space. There's development production in the space environment, and there's development and production from the space environment. And so countries like Belgium, a long time ago, very small country doing a lot of exploration and a lot of movement out. Luxembourg now has come in and very small Central European country that has opened up the gateways for a lot of research to be done in space economic development. They've done tax incentives to grow their space economy. But because you can understand and look at something that changed here and bring it back to a terrestrial pipeline means you do not have to sustain an infrastructure here to have an economy based on the space environment. And that's something that, as a researcher, as we said earlier on this, that utilize the space environment right now to learn something, bring it back to your terrestrial pipeline, your manufacturing, your fields, your classroom. And now it's from space that you're doing something. And now many countries can get involved and are getting involved from the from space aspect.

SPEAKER_04

And station just becomes a field side at that point where it's not so much what we do in science and in biology and in space isn't for space exploration. Some of it is, but much of it is for Earth and for things that we're doing that help innovate and create new things for that.

SPEAKER_01

I think a lot of people don't realize a lot of materials get tested for endurance when they're shipped to space and see if they can survive the radiation and all the other things that come with it. That's fascinating. And I I mean, I I obviously we are a land-grant university. Uh, our department is focused on preparing the next generation of citizens who are well versed in dealing with technology. Uh, one of the trends we are seeing uh in our field, machine learning, AI are becoming very big. I was speaking to some of our future innovators, our students, uh, in the last episode. And one came from actually Control Environment and Built Environment Lab in our department there. She's trying to study regal as well. And uh, but also trying to understand different other technologies along with that. She brought about machine learning and AI. Another valued undergrad student has got to do a master's in ornamental, he mentioned the same thing. I'm sure this is a question. AI, machine learning is probably becoming big uh in all of these as well. So, what what are some of the applications in plant production in space you could think of or applying it?

SPEAKER_04

Well, when you grow plants in space and when you're running food production in space or horticulture or any of the different aspects of agriculture in space, that takes a lot of crew time to manage and to attract that and to make sure they're all healthy. And so the more value can automate, the more the crew can then do what they're there to do in the field.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. You know, we talked about Regolith, and one thought just when I talked about uh the student, grad student. So she's also looking at aeroponics and hydroponics. Yes. So is the solution regolith only, or is it multiple platforms that we will have to take?

SPEAKER_04

And I'm a big proponent for Regolith. However, I also have a big realization that it's like that can't be the only solution. Just as none of those can be the only solution, the hydroponics of one minute, none of them alone are the solution that, because then you're putting all your chickens in one or eggs in one basket.

SPEAKER_02

Yes.

SPEAKER_04

To mix acronyms. Yes. And so you want to have that integrated system that has these multiple components that balance each other. So the weaknesses of one help balance the are balanced by the pros of the other. And so they can help make that integrated system.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, from a student perspective, keeping things to think about there forwards, especially say with the hydroponics. Okay, hydroponics is great, fundamentally perfect, awesome way of growing things. But if you can do more than one thing with the hydroponics, so you're growing the plant, but you're also filtering the water. Yes. You're recycling nutrients that may be gray water, black water, you're providing multiple lines of effort and growing a plant that has a food component to it. And so if you can start connecting those different areas, so it's not one singular task for what that one singular unit now in a space-limited environment, in a resource-limited environment, if you have a multitasker system as opposed to the unitasker systems, that means now you can do more with that limited space.

SPEAKER_04

And another component of that is the results of those products, some of those will be waste. And so no matter which kind of approach you're using, there's going to be waste. And so you also want to make sure that things that are waste from one become resource to another. And so all these systems are built to like work together.

SPEAKER_01

And some of the waste from this could enrich the regulate and stabilize the regulate and make a burst out of it.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, that's also a carbon source for other properties. If you want to make steel, you need carbon.

SPEAKER_01

And there's not always carbon available on the there's a there's a big push for the make it don't take. Yes. Oh, yeah, that's right. And if you go historically, there were there weren't many colonists that came over to the new world that survived very long, but reliant on a supply line from Europe, it didn't go too well. That's where the DOW is looking at this, also supply lines are vulnerable. They create risk. Supply line to space station, supply line to uh the moon creates vulnerability. And so the more you can do with biomanufacturing, with biorecycling, looking at biological agents to maintain control of and account for all the molecules that you have there, then you have a more sustainable environment. And so there's technologies that are being developed for one that help on earth for sustainability from water reclamation systems, water resource management, nutrient utilization, nutrient acquisition that helps with fertilizer use and other soil management structures. And then from the waste product side, you produce a plant that has a lot of recalcitrant carbon in it. That's not a good thing.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Because now you eventually have to replace that carbon back on that vehicle. So, what do you, how do you engineer that plant for less recalcitrant carbon, or you develop systems that then are able to better recycle that, break that carbon down, and make it get it back into the bioavailable environment. And it's not just everybody plants to carbon, but you get into nitrogen, you get into all the other elements. You really need somebody that understands soil and crop science, that understands the application to horticulture on this, to get involved in these. And there is that dual use application from yes, this would help space, but if you had a better water resource management system that came back to Earth, you know, not picking up West Texas, but West Texas would really appreciate that in anywhere would allow when you can clean up the water supply and bring it out to the crops. And some of those technologies that will get developed uh can also obviously uh help us because we have a lot of water here, but not much of it is usable for right now, clean water for irrigation and food production. Right. That's pretty cool. You said something where I want to put in the plug for horticulture when when uh folks came over from Europe, guess what? At least in this part of the world, the cars. Horticulture. Absolutely. And hopefully for the next mission, uh, you know, when we go to space, horticulture, we end for we're talking fruits and vegetables, or we're talking mostly tomatoes, but I'm gonna get the first space pick up. We're doing this. As you said, we are the world. You know, something cool yesterday. Also, we were chatting about it. What I found very cool is like we we don't think of these things, like we're talking about making champagne. Yes, right. Tell me about that. It's those little things, it's those little production models that we have to make in champagne has to be made in a specific way. You have to rotate the bottles, you have to do this. Well, what if you didn't? Yeah. And so this is where getting into a room, getting in front of a scientist, getting in front of faculty, getting in front of students, and opening up their mind to, well, what if you did to do that? Yeah, what would be the application to that? And then that's where we we like to have a little fun at the end of some of the talks and do a little uh stand-up improv. It's like, okay, stop us, let's go. What do you got? What do you think is not applicable to space? And looking at ways of then saying, oh, wait, what my research is applicable to yes. So from winemaking to cheese making to tons to soybeans to all of these different horticulture areas, there's a space application to it. Those the groups that are building the hydroponics, there's a space application to that. Those that are doing the engineering to support the group and other, there's a space application to those. And typically, and kind of like how Olivia developed the company coming in from the outside without a constrained thought of, well, this is how it works. Coming in from an outside perspective of going, well, why are you growing plants that land space? You don't do that here. Why would you do it there? I got an idea. Yeah, and facilitating that idea, I think, is one of the big reasons that we're here, that with the Spark program that we're doing here and getting faculty to submit proposals into this is to get them to think of well, there may be another answer, and maybe what I've been working on for 10 years because it doesn't look like anybody's tried this. This could not be cool. Let's go do it. That's what we're looking for is that new answer to that old problem. You know, during this conversation, one thought has just been cropping up while we Provide our degree programs or training to students in certain disciplines. But we've seen this in all those sci-fi movies that an individual has multiple layers of knowledge and multiple disciplines, almost like we all have to be polymaths here. True. Try to understand the physics of things while understanding how to grow plants as well, as Matt Damon again showed us. But I think that's where integrating that type of training. Right. And even if you're not an expert in everything, I think knowing it. I think universities, that's why, you know, I used to wonder why does somebody uh majoring in engineering has to take an arts class? Right. You know, now it starts making sense why you need all these parts to come together. I mean, do you see undergraduate education evolving as well as we have, you know, it has to be with it. That's that multidisciplinary side that that deans and robots and presidents talk about. I want a multidisciplinary student body, faculty base, I want them to be multidisciplinary. You don't have to be 100% fluent in physics, art, literature, history, science. You don't have to be 100% literary, but you have to know enough to have a conversation and to appreciate the nuances to be able to go into those different areas. Like you, my background is molecular genetics. And I'm looking at engineering systems, safety systems as uh regulations for vehicles, thermodynamics. I'm not a thermodynamicist, and I do not want to get into that area, but I know enough to something's right, something's wrong, and I can have a conversation.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

And my background was geology, but most of my committees were people in the marine science department or people in crap and soil science departments, because what I was doing wasn't specifically only geology. It was very multiple, cross-disciplinary.

SPEAKER_01

I think there's really a strong message for our graduate students in particular because they are going to specialize and move on. And sometimes we just get so narrowly focused as well. So this is a this has been a fascinating conversation. I mean, I my mind has kind of broadened, you know, space the final frontier. That statement, you know, William Shatner. It's the next frontier. It's not the final frontier. Yeah, because low Earth orbit's next, then later's after that, Mars, everything keeps changing. So yeah, we just keep expanding, going further, and that's the fun. Yeah, that that uh I remember I was growing up watching, of course, like everybody else, Star Trek and uh William Shatner would show up with you know with the Space the Final Frontier. I think you guys have already shown that's not going to be the end. This is not we are going to keep going beyond this. This has been fascinating. Raleigh, thank you very much for your time. Thanks for being here. And let's keep going. Thanks again. Absolutely. Let's do space. Yeah, let's do the space. Thank you, sir. Thank you.

SPEAKER_03

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Horticultural Innovators. Subscribe if you want to learn more and spread the good word. Thanks and giga.