As countries prepare for a new era of human exploration, the race to grow food in space is emerging as one of the most important scientific contests of the decade.
China has drawn the most attention in recent months after completing full rice life cycles aboard the Chinese Space Station, a milestone that no other program has reached.
Engineers had to improvise solutions, but the plants still produced new grains, suggesting that long‑term food production in orbit is possible.
By the time Tiangong‑1 and Tiangong‑2 were launched, controlled plant‑growth trials were already underway, leading to the breakthrough in 2022 when astronauts aboard the Wentian module completed the world's first full rice life cycle in orbit.
Read more at The Manila Times
As countries prepare for a new era of human exploration, the race to grow food in space is emerging as one of the most important scientific contests of the decade. China, the United States and Europe are taking different paths toward the same goal: figuring out how astronauts will eat when missions stretch far beyond low Earth orbit and supply ships can no longer keep up.
China has drawn the most attention in recent months after completing full rice life cycles aboard the Chinese Space Station, a milestone that no other program has reached. The experiments, carried out by researchers under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, showed that staple crops can reproduce in microgravity despite pollen that floats, seeds that lose their sense of direction and water that refuses to behave. Engineers had to improvise solutions, but the plants still produced new grains, suggesting that long‑term food production in orbit is possible.
China began experimenting with food and crop biology in space in 1987, when it first sent plant seeds aboard recoverable satellites to study how cosmic radiation and microgravity affected growth, and that early work eventually evolved into a modern program in the 2000s as biological payloads flew on Shenzhou missions and China prepared its own space laboratories.
By the time Tiangong‑1 and Tiangong‑2 were launched, controlled plant‑growth trials were already underway, leading to the breakthrough in 2022 when astronauts aboard the Wentian module completed the world's first full rice life cycle in orbit.
Read more at The Manila Times
