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Troy Miller, Post-Doctoral Research Associate, Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Plants for Space, The University of Western Australia

Why grow plants in space? They can improve how we produce food and medicine on Earth

ARC Centre of Excellence in Plants for Space, CC BY-ND

Sometime in the 2040s, humans may well reach a new frontier – Mars. To get there, we’ll need sustainable sources of food, medicines and materials.

As researchers who work on engineering plants to produce such resources in space, we sometimes get asked: “why?”. With issues such as climate change, inequality, global pandemics and environmental degradation, shouldn’t we be focused on Earth, not Mars?

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