Looking at the history of growing food in space

The quest to grow food beyond Earth has fascinated scientists and space agencies for decades, not only as a matter of survival, but as a critical strategy to sustain life on long-duration missions and future interplanetary exploration. Although many imagine leafy greens in space, the first vegetable ever to take root in microgravity was the humble potato. Back in the 1990s, NASA and the University of Wisconsin–Madison began collaborating to test whether tubers could grow in space, laying the groundwork for future crop experiments and pioneering techniques in controlled environment agriculture.

That early step, modest yet profound, eventually led to later breakthroughs such as lettuce grown aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Understanding how these experiments evolved offers a rich history of space agriculture, from engineering challenges to botanical triumphs and insights into plant adaptation in novel environments.

In 1995, researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison successfully sent potato leaf cuttings into space aboard the Space Shuttle via a system called Astroculture. The experiment involved growing white potatoes (Solanum tuberosum) in a closed‑loop, controlled environment to assess whether tubers could form without Earth’s gravity. The potato slices were supported in a gravel-like medium and watered through a specially calibrated system. After about 16 days, tiny tubers, each around 1.5 cm in diameter, had developed, demonstrating that tuberous plants could produce edible biomass even in microgravity.

Looking at the history of growing food in space

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