Moon to Mars: Exploring Food Production in Space

In this out-of-this-world episode of Urban Pods, we take a giant leap into the future of food systems by exploring the fascinating world of Space Agriculture. Host Dr. R welcomes Dr. Matthew Mickens, a distinguished NASA scientist specializing in plant growth research in controlled environments. We dive into the extreme challenges of growing plants in space, including managing microgravity’s effects on air and fluid dynamics , the necessity of LED lighting systems, and overcoming limited resources (Mass, Volume, Power, Water, and Waste – the “MVP WW”).

The conversation also addresses critical aspects like food safety and the threat of plant pathogens in controlled environments, highlighting the importance of hazard analysis (HACCP) principles. Dr. Mickens shares his incredible career journey, transitioning from lighting materials science to vertical farming, and finally, bringing his commercial CEA expertise back to NASA.

Transcript

 I am Ruchika  Kashyap, AKA doctor R, and for today's episode, we are taking a giant leap, beyond our atmosphere into the future of farming in space, while connecting it back to how it impacts the food systems right here   📍 on Earth. joining us today is someone whose work is quite literally out of the world.

Dr. Matthew  Mickens, a NASA scientist researching plant growth in space. His work focuses on optimizing plant production in controlled environments, a topic that connects directly with urban and controlled environment agriculture. We'll be diving into his research, the future of space farming and how lessons from beyond our atmosphere can help shape sustainable food systems.

We'll  also tie this discussion into our broader theme lunar harvests to local plates. An episode recorded specifically for the SCIP fellowship where parallels will be drawn from conversations with Dr. Mickens and Kendall Reya, Georgia's youngest urban farmer to explore how urban communities contribute to food security today while preparing for the challenges of tomorrow.

Dr. Mickens, welcome to Urban Pods. It's incredible to have you here, and I cannot wait to hear your story and insights into the Space Ag. To be honest, I was so nervous to record this episode for two reasons. First. This is my first Zoom podcast recording. I like to do it in person, where we can interact and use all our senses . Since I've met you before at the CEA National workshop last year, I felt good about it. I was like, I can do it. But the second thing that made me nervous is the topic itself, space.

I don't know anything about it. basically  I am gonna have you lead the episode so the first question that came to my mind  📍 was plant scientist at   📍 nasa.

Really? 

What does that mean?

So what do you do?  

First off thanks Dr. R. It's incredible to be here. I appreciate you having me on, and yeah, likewise I'm a little nervous as well. I have done a podcast before. Actually I did one for my nephew a few years ago. And it was fun. It was a lot of fun.

And I think this will be a good time. So yeah the point you raised up about space we actually, here at NASA are learning about it ourselves. And so that's the thing. I don't think a lot of us actually know everything that we need to know about it. We're constantly getting new information and learning new things about it.

Yeah. Being a plant scientist at nasa. It's a really cool job. And of course, as you mentioned, it's all about using concepts in controlled environment agriculture to grow crops as fresh food options for astronauts. That's pretty much it. Plant scientists in general, I think we sit in a unique realm between, botany and horticulture.









But as plant scientists, we take what botanists know. And what horticulture do, and we design experiments to answer questions about plants. And in my case, most of my efforts revolve around the question, what does it take to grow crops in space?

Considering, the five basic needs for plants, we know that plants, in order to grow, need light, an atmosphere, water, nutrients and a substrate or soil, right? But as plant scientists, we study what happens when you change one or two of these variables while keeping the others constant.

And controlled environments allow us to do this very nicely. However, even in controlled environments, these variables behave very differently in space than they do on earth. And so my role pretty much as a plant scientist here at NASA is to solve the challenge of growing plants in conditions or locations where they have never been grown before.

And I know that sounds very star trackish, but essentially that's what we do.

When I was preparing for this podcast, I was like, there's so many questions that are coming up into my mind. And you answered most of them. And they were like, why do we need to produce food in space?

And the answer is so direct and perfect that we need to provide fresh food for our astronauts, right? That's there in that one line, everything, the mission, the goal of a plant scientist at nasa. But I'm curious, this is the nerdy me who doesn't know about space asking, are you also exploring ways to grow food on Moon Mars and beyond, or something like that?

Definitely, NASA has plans to establish a presence on the moon, like we are going back to the moon. And we are, as far as I know, we do have plans to go to Mars. We actually call it the Moon to Mars campaign.

We even have a whole Mars campaign, office and program that sponsors a lot of the technologies that we work with.  However, in order to get to, either of these destinations, we actually have to travel through space.  So for instance, a trip to the moon is, it's not that bad, right?

It takes about three days roughly. Not really much time to grow food, but if you're thinking about like a trip to Mars, which is, seven to nine months a lot of the diet for the crew will be a packaged diet, supplementing the packaged diet with fresh food during the trip, I think is going to be super important.

 From a nutritional standpoint, a lot of health promoting, like secondary metabolites are best when they're consumed fresh. But also even from a behavioral health standpoint crops provide varieties and flavors, colors, aromas. And this actually, they all counteract the condition known as menu fatigue.

The crew, usually they have a tendency to get tired of eating the same thing, and they actually often lose weight.  But then also lastly, when we're thinking about planetary surface production, say for instance, when we get to Mars, we are actually intending on using crop production on the moon to practice for that.

And so I think both are actually important.

Wow. My mind is thinking about all these possibilities right now. Moon, in three days, and Mars in seven to eight months. Definitely we need food for our astronauts. 

Even we are so busy in our eight to five work mode.

We don't have time to produce fresh food for us. This is the reality, we just go for the packaged and ready to eat meals and stuff like that. The moto and    the goal for production in both space and earth is fresh food basically And that's how I like  📍 toconnect these two.  you also  📍 brought another very good point that growing plants, there are a lot of disciplines involved, right? Yes. So there is a plant scientist, there is  📍 a horticulture person , there is a biologist. So each of these disciplines are specific and then they know basically what's going behind and what could be done better. So I often joke about it when my friends come to my house and they're like you don't have any plants. You are a plant scientist. I'm like, I'm so bad at taking care of plants.

So You are a plant pathologist. That's literally your job to save plants from diseases. I'm like, there's so many things on the background,

yeah. It's a little different being a scientist and then, actually having the skill to grow crops it's a different skillset.

It's crazy to wrap your head around it. I should be a good grower. I'm a plant scientist. But I, myself, I have a couple plants on my patio, it's not what you would expect. I'm a NASA plant scientist. You should have a whole garden, on your patio, but I don't.

I'm literally the same. Growing a plant is an art, and. I might be good at saving it from diseases, but I'm not good at providing them nutrition, which is like taking care of the physiology of that plant.

So there are so many different things going on. So growing food in space might be even tougher, I assume, because it's dealing with zero or microgravity. Controlled lightning limited resources. And then I don't know how big the spaceships are. I'm just imagining so many factors apart from just the normal factors that comes into play when we, grow food.

So how does that work? Yeah. 

You're absolutely right. As far as the actual space environment microgravity, the problem with having, gravity is the impact, for instance, on fluids and air movement, which are both very important for growing crops in space, surface tension forces usually tend to dominate with the absence of gravity.

So for example, oxygen doesn't dissolve very well into water. And plant roots need oxygen. But also when you think about it there's no convection.  When there's no gravity hot air rising and then, cool dense air getting pulled back down by gravity. This doesn't happen in space this is like the main driving force for our weather here on earth.

But in space, there's a lack of convection and it usually causes gases to kind of form spherical envelopes around objects. Which could actually be pretty problematic for plants. Seeing that plants produce oxygen, as a byproduct of photosynthesis. If they don't have, for instance, adequate ventilation fans to, break up and mix up the air around them to cause that turbulence, they can't readily access the CO2.

The carbon dioxide that is required for their growth. And so they essentially will suffocate. And what we've actually seen is that some of them start, they start to actually force liquid out of their leaves. If they can't transpire water vapor, they'll force the liquid out of their leaves, which is a process called gut tation if they don't have the adequate, ventilation and airflow  in terms of lighting for instance.

So in space, you can't just open a window and say, I'm gonna get sunlight today. ' cause electric lighting is usually, via LEDs is what we prefer. And that's what we've been using. But yes, just direct sunlight is really pretty deadly, 'cause we, without the protection of our atmosphere, that blocks harmful UV and high energy radiation.

We want to use some form of electric lighting. And as far as limited resources in space. NASA has acronyms for everything. And the best way I've come to remember it, so MVP ww, and so what is that? I think of MVP, like we normally associate with most valuable players, right?

So the most valuable players in terms of limited resources are mass volume and power. That's our MVP. Oh, wow. And then also you can throw in, so water and waste, right? That's the ww water is a limited resource. Waste is actually something you want to keep limited, right?  The more resources you, reuse or recycle, the better.

And I would actually throw crew time in there as well. So crew time is basically the time, astronauts have available to do tasks.  In their isolation, they actually have a lot of things to do, right? As opposed to, keeping systems running, they don't really have the time, to grow crops so we want to make sure that we're mindful of crew time, that is a limited resource.

 Now in addition to microgravity, there are also other gravities as well, right? So for instance, crop production on a planetary surface alleviate some of the issues caused by microgravity. So when you think about it, the moon is one sixth of earth's gravity, right? Or Mars is actually, three eighths, Earth's gravity.

And it's strange how it works out. For instance, three is actually 38%, and one six is actually 16%. It's almost like it's meant to be for us to go to these places. That itself has an impact on things like atmospheric pressure, That's something we actually still don't fully understand as far as the impacts of reduced atmospheric pressure on plants. And then lastly, considering when we get to the point where we can have surface habitats, we have to be mindful of. Things that we launch here from Earth, for instance that's mass, right? Mass that we launch from Earth usually translates into dollar amounts.  Everything that spend money on launching into space is our tax. Paid money, right? That's tax dollars. And I think we keep that low.

Definitely. And 

definitely it seems like it's a rocket science, literally to grow food on a rocket. And so many factors like mass volumes, pressure, workforce water and then waste. So if we talk about the production cycle in itself, from handling the seed itself to harvesting, there are like critical training and learning steps involved.  even handling the seeds because they're so tiny, might be an issue.

Like right . And then you talked about how time of. Every astronaut is a limited resource. So are there trainings for astronauts to help them learn all these factors?

Because they're not plant scientists, right?  

Yeah. Most of them, not a lot of them are pilots, essentially. But I will say, so yes, astronauts always get what we call crew procedures. For every task that they're required to do sometimes they probably get too many but, that does include, formal trainings watching videos or even

Hey, Matt, you wanna repeat this part? I will say astronauts always get crew procedures for every task that they're required to do. Yeah, and they probably get too many to be honest with you. But it does, include formal training.

That means that, they watch videos or they have a ground support team that watches them to ensure that they, follow tasks And then of course the crew actually has tablets on hand, that they use very often. They always have a tablet, to work with or to work on.

So definitely like any other project, right? It's a multidisciplinary and multi people project. you need hands, you need all these trainings to make sure that the, astronauts are well trained And then moving back to the thing we talked about, food waste, and handling food in general.

If you can go into a little bit of specifics, how tough it is to handle and harvest food or store seeds. I don't know. I'm just trying to envision because I'm like, where does the food waste go? How is it disposed of? 

normally I think there's a short term way that they store food, but there's not like a dedicated fridge as far as I know. So for instance, in taking the case of the International Space Station, if they grow food, a lot of times before they eat it, they have to send it back to Earth so that we can, run food safety checks on it to make sure that it's safe to eat.

And so a lot of that food actually gets stored in a minus 80 freezer and then it gets brought back down to Earth. But as far as like their general food waste that they, encounter on a daily basis, usually food waste is discarded, in the traditional. Trash or waste system on orbit.

And then usually that waste is then placed inside of a sickness capsule and then it's jettison back to earth and it actually burns up in the atmosphere. So the waste actually returns to earth as ashes and gases, so to speak. 

That's interesting. And very smart, yeah. You talked about food safety. So the pathologist in me, could not resist, ask you like, it's a controlled environment and microclimates can be conducive to plant pathogens too, right? Are you also working on these aspects of potential plant diseases that could happen in space shuttles and space and also some insect tissues, are there trainings for that too?

This is a very good question. Because. Plant pathogens. That's actually something we've encountered in space, believe it or not. Not necessarily in terms of pests we are definitely evaluating the future risk of something like this happening. God forbid we don't want any kind of, plant pest. But pathogens is actually something we encountered back in 2016, we grew flowers in the veggie chamber. Basically to test if we could grow a long duration crop from seed to and then to seed again.

And during that growth period, at some point the fans were turned off. And the plants became very stressed. They couldn't transpire, and they were eventually attacked by an opportunistic fungus. And it was actually a fungus that was already just hanging around up there on, on the international Space station.

And four out of the six plants actually died. Two of them survived and went on the flower. But since that happened I'm now working on a way to assess risk before we launch things to space.

So I'm using some of the skills I've acquired in the industry. For instance, the principle of HACCP, which is hazard analysis for critical control points. There's a program which you can implement to approve suppliers and to certify or, analyze raw materials such as, seeds and substrates before they're launched.

So you can reduce the risk of, plant pathogens actually becoming an issue in space. 

The hazard risk analysis is so important, we wanna know what is out there. And then also seeing how different critical points could be hazards, because controlled environment is so diverse, and one of them is space too. So you really need to do these surveys and intense critical control point risk assessments to know what could be entry point of that pathogen. 

Exactly. Every step in the process, we analyze all the risks and ways to mitigate the risk.

Before we actually start, the process of production. We already have everything, mapped out and, SOPs and implementing different programs to again mitigate the risk. 

What I'm thinking is growing food in space is basically just another controlled environment, we are dealing with all the lightning and nutrition parameters and also trying to prevent the diseases we can. So so connecting it back to earth, since there are so many overlaps, right? So there is lot to learn from the space farming.

But before all this, something I wanna know is how you joined as a plant scientist in nasa. What was your journey like? 

Oh, man. This is gonna be a long story. I'll try to make it short, but I can't guarantee you. My background I started out with a bachelor's and master's in environmental science.

And that is actually when I was working on my master's, when my advisor at the time planted the seed and told me that, if you wanted to, you could work for nasa. And I'm like, what? Wait a minute, how I'm an environmental science major, like how can I work for nasa?

I'm not trying to be an astronaut, but he said, man, there are so many disciplines that NASA uses. There's, you can get into it in a whole host of ways. And so it was actually during my master's where I got my first NASA scholarship or fellowship through the North Carolina Space Grant Consortium.

So I went to school at North Carolina a and t State University. And my thesis project basically was in lighting materials. I was trying to look for materials that I could integrate into a sensor for uv. at the time we were getting ready, NASA was actually gonna launch the, one of the Mars rovers, I think it was the later one to Mars.

And I was like, man, I wonder if they have a way to detect, UV at the surface of Mars. And so I actually studied materials that emit light when exposed to uv, and that kind of started my path. And actually I became a lighting expert. For my PhD I studied, or actually I synthesized materials called phosphorus, which are basically the same materials that are incorporated into LEDs, and that's how you get the different colors.

And so I studied a lot of, in terms of the interaction of light with matter and spectroscopy, I even took quantum mechanics courses and actually I turned, I had another project for my PhD, which basically was working with materials for LEDs. And I got a NASA fellowship during my PhD, which actually funded my last three years of my doctorate.

And it also gave me an opportunity to intern at the Kennedy Space Center when I graduated and I found out that NASA was actually using LEDs to grow plants. And so I'm like, and I found an area, my NASA mentor Ray will. I reached out to him via email and I actually got a chance to meet him when I was in school and he said, yeah, we have a gap, like we are using LEDs.

He handed me a publication. He was like, you know what? And there was a publication where Plant He was, it was a study that NASA did to show that plants actually respond to green light. In school we're taught that plants don't utilize green light at all. That's why they're green, right? They reflect green light.

But that's not true, and it blew my mind. He was like, no green light can trigger photosynthesis. And so NASA had a gap. They needed someone with expertise in lighting and light recipes to figure out what's the best light recipe or, the mixture of colors to grow crops in space.

And so I'm like I got all these skills with lighting. I wonder if I can fit that into nasa. And so here I am, and this is 15 years later, long story short, but that actually led to me getting a postdoc. When I finished my PhD, I got a postdoc in the NASA postdoc program.

And of course it was with that same mentor who I met Ray Wheeler. And Joy Master, they actually trained me. And that was my first introduction to CEA. And I actually became a plant scientist. I wasn't one walking into NASA that they turned me into one because of my expertise in lighting.

And I actually, I published a lot of good work in terms of just, what's a strategy to find the best light recipe for a crop. And while I was presenting some of my findings at a workshop in Rome and actually my postdoc was coming to an end and I was trying to find a job actually, 'cause I applied for positions at NASA and on the contractor side and I couldn't get any positions.

And so when I was presenting my research, there was. A professor in the audience and he asked me, what are you doing after you're a postdoc? And I was like I'm looking for a job actually. And so he introduced me to the founder of a vertical farming company called Elevate Farms. And within a month, actually, they flew me out to see some of their kind of prototype testing systems for a vertical farm.

They wanted to build vertical farms in New Jersey and Canada and. Lo and behold, they wanted me to lead the installation of the farm and commence the operation. I'm like, wait a minute. I'm a plant scientist. I grow things on a benchtop in a growth chamber. I was so terrified. They were like, no, we want you to not only build a farm but lead a whole operation.

And so it was just one of those moments in life where, you're absolutely terrified, but you still move forward anyway, not knowing what's gonna happen. And so that actually led to a position in the indoor vertical farming industry where I built a indoor vertical farm. We actually retrofitted a warehouse.

It was a 14,000 square foot warehouse into an indoor farm. Utilizing just, the skills that I got at nasa and I did that during the pandemic. I was able to, learn a lot of project management, a lot of skills that I had no idea that I would get. And I did that prior to coming back to nasa. So I actually, when I left about two years ago, so I've been at NASA now for two years. So NASA was actually looking at. My skillset after, working with the private industry and the commercial CEA space, especially for food safety. So it was I got skills at nasa, I brought 'em to vertical farming, and then I got skills in vertical farming and then brought 'em back to nasa.

So that's circle of life. 

Exactly. It's definitely a circle. I came full circle for sure. And then 

listening to your journey, honestly, I feel like it's a perfect example of why skills are important and how it can be utilized to different fields in different ways, in real life scenarios.

And also connections matter too. That's right. So if you just put in the hard work and keep going, your skills, your connections, everything will fall into place and life will show it's. Journey or path for you? That's right. I guess life will open the doors for you. And then honestly, I feel like Future of CEA space looks definitely bright to me.

Based on what your experiences are, based on what we have talked so far. And then connecting it back to earth or the present. How can we use these advancements or the work that you're doing in space biology or CEA space to benefit the communities or CEA industry or sector here on earth?

So yeah, that's a really good question. And so I guess in my opinion and during, my experience in CEA and for instance, the lessons learned and the transfer of knowledge on best practices it literally goes both ways, honestly. And many people don't realize this.

Yes, we're NASA and we do cool stuff, we don't know. Everything. So in fact, we actually, rely heavily on our academic colleagues and industry partners and nonprofit organizations to teach us just as much as we teach them. So like you mentioned, for instance, the core principles of CEA, right?

Like they remain the same no matter the location which is true. And this is why usually when I go to CEA conferences and workshops like the one I met you on, I actually see a lot of the same groups of people from the same companies, same universities quite often. It's almost like the CEA community is a close knit family, when you're thinking about it like on a just worldwide, it's not really that many of us in terms of just scale compared to the rest of the world.

And so a lot of us actually know each other, who are in the CEA industry. And so here at nasa we actually, to keep. With everyone's work, everyone's publications, everyone's patents just as much as the public try to keep up with what NASA does. And again like one of the reasons I mentioned that NASA brought me on board was for my food safety experience from industry, NASA actually wanted to apply some of the best practices, from commercial CEA to space farming which I think it's just really cool. 

Yeah it's really cool to see the two-way flow of information I'm an extension specialist as well, in extension we call it like closing the loop and two flow of information because research is important, but taking research out to the farmers or the stakeholders is important too, but also getting feedback from them and then also learning from them and incorporating that feedback into generating research hypothesis. And that's what you are doing. Exactly. 

As we look into the future, both space and on the earth, because they're not.

Literally very different. So what do you think the next major milestone could be for growing food in any extreme environment? 

Oh man. Yeah, that's a really good question. And because, commercial, CEA sector, especially, indoor vertical farms took a big hit during the pandemic, and a lot of them ended up shutting their doors.

And so it actually, the light went dim a little bit, but I do think that the commercial CEA sector will recover. I think it's gonna make a comeback just because it's needed more than ever now. And extreme environments, it's almost like there are different factors you can put into that, for instance, like the current, I would say even the socioeconomic environment.

It's probably more of an immediate threat than the climate, you know what I'm saying? For instance, if we're going to rely on commercial, CEA I think we should be mindful, for instance, like parts, things like LEDs. Like I know that China is like one of the largest ED manufacturers in the world, and now LEDs are now going to become more expensive just to import them to set up these vertical farms.

And along those same lines, I also think it's important to oppress upon our leaders that, to promote peace whenever, when and where we can get it. Because I think also conflict and war is a bigger source of food insecurity than we realize. But bringing it back to space there are collaborations between space and private industries as well as other space agencies.

So right now, as far as, for instance. Putting lunar crops or lunar greenhouses on the moon, NASA's pretty much looking to collaborate. We think that we need to, encompass not just NASA expertise, expertise that reflects the whole world. We actually have collaboration. So the German DLR space Institute, as well as the Canadian Space Agency have been involved with advising them.

They're working on a lunar agricultural module to actually grow crops on the moon. It's not gonna be that big, maybe about 25 square meters. But again, a lot of that depends on. The vision and the budget that we get from the current administration as well as the vision of our newly sworn NASA administrator, a lot of that dictates, what we do in terms of the milestones for NASA and our future.

But like I mentioned before, I do think that practicing growing crops on the lunar surface will prepare us for the Martian surface. And then I guess one of the more immediate milestones that I have within my group we're building the next generation production chamber that will go on a Mars Transit vehicle.

It's called the O Hollow three Chamber. So unlike our previous Grove Chambers known as Veggie or the advanced plant habitat, they were mainly for research on the International Space Station. They were our main research platforms. And the ISS has been great. It has been our laboratory and our access to microgravity to actually, get to play around with what happens when you grow plants with no gravity.

ISS has been our platform and unfortunately it actually will be de orbited in the next five years around by 2030 we were just informed that there's a massive budget that's gonna go into deorbiting, the ISS. So we're still waiting. It's a lot of uncertainty because that funding has to come from somewhere.

And so we're just waiting to get direction on how that will impact, the research that we do. But we do want to get to the point where if we can put a crop production chamber on the Marsh transit vehicle or on the moon, we want to be able to grow crops continuously as a dietary supplement, not just for research, but as a dedicated platform for supplementing the diet.

And so that means, growing fresh crops, multiple cultivars or even, utilizing the CO2 from the cabin to have that, sustainable interaction between plants and the environment. That's really the main milestones that we have to conquer. Oh, the milestones look awesome to me and 

it's amazing to hear your plans and, midterm, long-term short-term plans as well.

 I feel like we can definitely look forward to some Martian forms and lunar greenhouses in the future. 

Definitely.

The day is not far, I should say, and staying positive and collaborating is what we can do and learning from each other because there is a lot to learn from.

So what would be your insights or any advices that you wanna give to youth or younger generation? Because CEA is a sector where young people are getting attracted to

Younger farmers are playing a role in not only controlled environments, but urban food production spaces as well. So what would be your advice to all those young buds getting involved in the CEA space? 

The younger generation are actually more involved with NASA than people know. So for instance, one of the challenges is actually crop screening. Like knowing what in the world are we gonna grow, right? There are hundreds to thousands of crops and options, right? But how do you know?

How do you pick, what are you gonna grow, right? And so there are only maybe 20 or 30 of us on the space crop production team here at KSC and way too many crops to go through. So NASA actually has a partnership. With the nonprofit called Patan Fairchild Botanical Gardens, and they have what is called a Growing Beyond Earth program where they've orchestrated a way to install very simple growth chambers into hundreds of middle school and high school classrooms so that the students can actually test out different crops for us.

And so we're actually kinda leveraging citizen scientists, so to speak, to actually screen through crops for us. We've actually flown at least two crops. Were recommendations from the Growing Beyond Earth program. It was a dragon lettuce and I believe DOF P Choy. But those were recommendations from all of the science experiments that were happening in classrooms.

'Cause we figured, if there's a plant or a crop that's hardy enough to survive a classroom full of curious students, it'll definitely survive space. You know what I'm saying? And yeah and actually I recently, we had a there was a workshop with the students who were invol