Growing Food for Space and Earth: NASA's Contributions to Vertical Agriculture

Beginning in the 1980s with NASA's Controlled Ecological Life Support System (CELSS) Program and later the 1990s and early 2000s with the Advanced Life Support Project, NASA conducted extensive testing with crops in controlled environment conditions. One series of tests conducted at Kennedy Space Center used a large chamber with vertically stacked shelves to support hydroponic growing trays, with a bank of electric lamps above each shelf. This is essentially the same approach that has become popular for use in so-called vertical agriculture systems, which attempts to optimize plant production in a fixed volume. Some of the findings and commonalities of NASA's work during this period and how it overlaps with current interests in vertical agriculture will be presented in the talk.