Space Lab® LEAF Experiment Selected for Artemis III Lunar Mission
LEAF β Payload Concept
(Boulder, Colorado – March 26, 2024) Space Lab® announced that the company has been selected to develop LEAF, a plant science experiment for NASA’s Artemis III Lunar mission. Artemis III will bring humans to the surface of the moon for the first time in this century. The Artemis III Deployed Instruments (A3DI) call solicited instrument suites to conduct high-priority science investigations that can be uniquely accomplished by human deployment of payloads on the surface of the Moon. LEAF, which stands for Lunar Effects on Agricultural Flora, will study how the Lunar environment affects the germination and growth of plants that may be used to feed astronauts of the future. Human nutrition and life support (carbon dioxide removal, oxygen production, and water purification) provided by space agriculture will enable long-duration human exploration of the moon and beyond. Plant biology research on the Lunar surface is needed to understand the effects of partial gravity and space radiation on crop physiology and to demonstrate the potential for sustained, off-planet propagation.
The LEAF β (“LEAF Beta”) payload will protect plants within from excessive Lunar sunlight, radiation, and the vacuum of space, while observing their photosynthesis, growth, and responses to stress. The experiment includes a plant growth chamber with an isolated atmosphere, housing red and green varieties of Brassica rapa (Wisconsin Fast Plants®), Wolffia (duckweed), and Arabidopsis thaliana. By bringing seedling samples back to Earth, as part of Artemis III, the research team will apply advanced system biology tools to study physiological responses at a molecular level. Only one other payload has studied plants on the moon; the 2019 Chinese Chang’e 4 mission provided a picture of a 4-day old cotton sprout then suffered thermal control failure. The Lunar Effects on Agricultural Flora (LEAF) research will provide the first, comprehensive assessment of organism-wide effects of the Lunar environment, reducing risks for sustainable off-planet crop production and bioregenerative life support. Space Lab Vice President, Christine Escobar, stated “This research will be a pivotal step toward understanding how we might use agriculture in space to support human crew, paving the way for sustained Lunar exploration and even missions to Mars.”
The LEAF team includes Principal Investigator Christine Escobar, Space Lab CEO Adam Escobar, Space Lab Mechanical Engineer Madison Jones, and space biologists from NASA Kennedy Space Center (Dr. Aubrie O’Rourke, Dr. Gioia Massa, and Dr. Raymond Wheeler), University of Colorado at Boulder (Dr. Barbara Demmig-Adams), Purdue University (Dr. Marshall Porterfield), USDA (Dr. Gayle Volk), La Trobe University (Dr. Mathew Lewsey), and University of Adelaide (Dr. Jenny Mortimer). Space Lab is a small business in Boulder, CO, that researches and develops technology for Earth-independent space habitation and exploration. Escobar stated, “We create tools and resources that people need to live and work in space sustainably, so that they can explore further and stay longer. We consider ourselves space habitat outfitters, developing sustainable solutions for humanity’s greatest journey.”
If you want to join the Space Lab LEAF Team, please see our positions available.
"We focus on life support, thermal control, environmental monitoring, crop production and other food systems, accommodations for crew health and comfort, telemetry and communications systems, data processing, power systems, and even science instrumentation. You could say that we think of ourselves as space habitat outfitters."
- CHRISTINE ESCOBAR, Space Lab Co-founder & Vice President
LEAF β Payload Concept
