NASA is betting the future of space travel relies, in part, on farming in space—and the agency is turning to farming and fertilizer experts in Sarasota to help bring agriculture to the final frontier.
Not much is growing at Sarasota’s Sweetgrass Farms in the 90°F heat of September, but general manager Barrett Demler pointed to tray after tray of tiny seedlings, quietly taking root in the shade, for what makes this farm’s produce so unique.
“Some of them are labeled, even, ‘NASA plants,’" Demler said, surveying his budding crop. "There’s about 30 to 40 varieties of plants that NASA ... wants to grow in outer space.”
Long the realm of science fiction, farming in space is growing closer to reality. Last year NASA successfully raised a small crop of red romaine lettuce on the International Space Station. It was one small step for farming in orbit, but NASA scientists hope it’s the start of a giant leap toward the future of space travel.
“As we kind of leave the cradle of earth and go to our proving grounds around the moon, and then ultimately to Mars, we’re going to want to probably grow some of our food along the way," said Trent Smith, the project manager of NASA’s Veggie program. Part of that project is finding the right crops to grow in outer space, and the reason why Sweetgrass is growing NASA’s favored varieties of tomatoes, cabbage, and other space crops.
“It’s very important that these plants are productive, germinate well, grow well, and of critical importance, taste good," Smith continued. "Because seeds are light, and there’s really something about supplementing an astronaut’s diet with fresh nutritious food, which is really the end goal of Veggie.”
Helping NASA and Sweetgrass grow that food in the challenging conditions of space required another innovation from Sarasota: an advanced fertilizer first designed for Florida’s demanding growing conditions. Ed Rosenthal spent years perfecting that fertilizer. He calls it Florikan.
"We recognized that we had to have a controlled release fertilizer that was made in Florida, that was going to be perfect for Florida conditions," Rosenthal said. "A hundred degrees, in the summer, and if it gets four inches of rain, that’s the real world.”
Rosenthal said the breakthrough was engineering a chemical coating—a polymer—that allows for what’s called a “controlled release” of nutrients. The farmer (or astronaut) picks a crop, and a timeline (anywhere from a few weeks, a few months, to a few years), and the Florikan fertilizer slowly doles out just the right amount of food. Rosenthal's fertilizer won several awards, and in 2005, one such award gave him a chance to collaborate with NASA scientists for a week of intensive collaboration. In the fertilizer, NASA saw the technology it needed to finally start farming in space.
"At the end of 40 hours of really intense, vigorous research, they basically handed me a blueprint of a recipe of which polymer to use … making it like a human skin, so you’re getting moisture to come in, and the fertilizer to go back out,” he explained.
Rosenthal says the blueprint was a Eureka moment—one that took another four years to perfect. Now he’s formulated fertilizers for the red romaine lettuce that grew on the ISS, as well as for and other crops, like the dwarf tomato plant Barrett Demler was tending at Sweetgrass Farms.
"Once it’s a full-grown plant, it’ll only be about the size of a grapefruit to a bowling ball," he said, holding a handful of the fertilizer. "But that one plant will produce two to three pounds of tomatoes” in just a few months.
A high-yield plant is exactly what NASA needs for future farming projects. But Trent Smith with NASA’s Veggie project said it’s not simply about adding fresh food to the astronaut’s diet. Growing food in orbit, or on future trips deeper into space, is also about reminding the astronauts of home.
"Really, that connection back to earth and watching something grow over time, is I think very important for the astronauts," Smith said. "And I think it will be even more important as they see the earth get smaller and smaller on the way to Mars."
Finding the right mix of plants is getting one more bit of help from south Florida: a research project called “Growing Beyond Earth” is now underway at more than 100 middle and high schools along the Florida's southeast coast. The schools are using a NASA grow box, and Rosenthal’s fertilizer, to test more than 30 varieties of edible plants to help NASA decide what it’ll grow next on the space station.
NASA will use that information to put its next round of crops in the ground—250 miles above earth—in March 2017.