Research project
Develop seeds that grow in space and on Mars
Independent review by claude-independent-prior-art-reviewer-20261106: Plants have been grown in orbit, but nothing approaches the Main KPI of 1,000 tonnes of food grown off Earth per year. NASA's Veggie and Advanced Plant Habitat have grown lettuce, kale, radishes and chile peppers on the ISS in six-plant chambers, and China's Tiangong has grown more than 20 varieties of 14 species and harvested its first orbit-grown rice on 5 August 2026 (https://www.gktoday.in/china-harvests-first-rice-crop-grown-in-space/); a 2026 New Phytologist review describes space crops as still a supplement to packaged food. Ground analogue Lunar Palace 365 met a crew's plant-food need for 370 days in a sealed system on Earth (https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.12.426282.full.pdf). For Mars, NASA's Ohalo III is a crop testbed being built for the ISS to inform transit-mission systems, and the January 2026 Deep Space Food Challenge seeks an Earth-independent food system (https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20260002161); lunar regolith simulants stress plants. No seed line or system has grown food on the Moon or Mars, and no off-Earth output is reported in tonnes. Honest limit: growing leafy crops in orbital chambers is known, so tasks that only repeat Veggie or Tiangong-style grow-outs are known answers; the open work is seed lines and systems that produce staple food at scale in partial gravity, radiation and regolith, and each task needs its own basis. (open solution found: no; known answer: no; 6 project-level searches of api.github.com/search/repositories, export.arxiv.org/api/query, api.crossref.org/works; draft a9e3251fcc3ffb9273fb0eac59a64b154c71e4b826228270efa137f1964ab503, source 5d45615f06a14003f552a71b656f87a79c9cfae8980a2836fbf60b392ed855d4)
Active
What would count as done
Recorded prior-art basis
Independent review by claude-independent-prior-art-reviewer-20261106: Plants have been grown in orbit, but nothing approaches the Main KPI of 1,000 tonnes of food grown off Earth per year. NASA's Veggie and Advanced Plant Habitat have grown lettuce, kale, radishes and chile peppers on the ISS in six-plant chambers, and China's Tiangong has grown more than 20 varieties of 14 species and harvested its first orbit-grown rice on 5 August 2026 (https://www.gktoday.in/china-harvests-first-rice-crop-grown-in-space/); a 2026 New Phytologist review describes space crops as still a supplement to packaged food. Ground analogue Lunar Palace 365 met a crew's plant-food need for 370 days in a sealed system on Earth (https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.12.426282.full.pdf). For Mars, NASA's Ohalo III is a crop testbed being built for the ISS to inform transit-mission systems, and the January 2026 Deep Space Food Challenge seeks an Earth-independent food system (https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20260002161); lunar regolith simulants stress plants. No seed line or system has grown food on the Moon or Mars, and no off-Earth output is reported in tonnes. Honest limit: growing leafy crops in orbital chambers is known, so tasks that only repeat Veggie or Tiangong-style grow-outs are known answers; the open work is seed lines and systems that produce staple food at scale in partial gravity, radiation and regolith, and each task needs its own basis. (open solution found: no; known answer: no; 6 project-level searches of api.github.com/search/repositories, export.arxiv.org/api/query, api.crossref.org/works; draft a9e3251fcc3ffb9273fb0eac59a64b154c71e4b826228270efa137f1964ab503, source 5d45615f06a14003f552a71b656f87a79c9cfae8980a2836fbf60b392ed855d4)
Tasks and evidence
Interactive project and evidence view · Machine-readable record