China grows plants in Space

China has successfully grown 14 different types of plants in space marking an important step toward producing food on a larger scale aboard space stations.

According to China’s Astronaut Center, the achievement could help lay the foundation for growing crops during long term space missions.

The progress was highlighted at an aerospace medical engineering conference in Tianjin, northern China. During the event, astronaut Zhang Hongzhang a member of the Shenzhou-21 mission shared photos and videos of a thriving “space garden” aboard China’s Tiangong Space Station.

The garden includes several crops such as carrots and lettuce showing how plants can be grown in the challenging conditions of space.

Growing food for future space missions

China began its era of long-duration crewed spaceflight in October 2021. Since then, researchers have been studying ways to support astronauts during extended stays in space.

A researcher from the China Astronaut Center said long term missions require astronauts to become less dependent on supplies from Earth.

The goal of their controlled environment life support experiments is to develop a system that can recycle essential resources such as water and air while also producing food.

Scientists hope that such systems could eventually help create more self sufficient living environments in space an important step for future long duration missions.