Moon to Mars: Exploring Food Production in Space

Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA)

Microgravity

Guttation

MVP WW

Phosphors

O Hollow Three Chamber

HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points)

Ruchika Kashyap: I am Ruchika Kashyap, AKA doctor R, and for today’s episode, we are taking a giant leap, beyond our atmosphere into the future of farming in space, while connecting it back to how it impacts the food systems right here on Earth. Joining us today is someone whose work is quite literally out of the world- Dr. Matthew Mickens, a NASA scientist researching plant growth in space. His work focuses on optimizing plant production in controlled environments, a topic that connects directly with urban and controlled environment agriculture. We’ll be diving into his research, the future of space farming and how lessons from beyond our atmosphere can help shape sustainable food systems.

Ruchika Kashyap: We’ll also tie this discussion into our broader theme: lunar harvests to local plates. An episode recorded specifically for the SCIP fellowship where parallels will be drawn from conversations with Dr. Mickens and Kendall Rae, Georgia’s [00:01:00] youngest urban farmer to explore how urban communities contribute to food security today while preparing for the challenges of tomorrow.

Ruchika Kashyap: Dr. Mickens, welcome to Urban Pods. It’s incredible to have you here, and I cannot wait to hear your story and insights into the Space Ag. To be honest, I was so nervous to record this episode for two reasons. First- this is my first Zoom podcast recording. I like to do it in person, where we can interact and use all our senses . Since I’ve met you before at the CEA National workshop last year, I felt good about it. I was like, I can do it. But the second thing that made me nervous is the topic itself, space.

Ruchika Kashyap: I don’t know anything about it. Basically I am gonna have you lead the episode so the first question that came to my mind was -plant scientist at NASA. Really? What does that mean? So what do you do? 

Matthew Mickens: First off thanks Dr. [00:02:00] R. It’s incredible to be here. I appreciate you having me on, and yeah, likewise I’m a little nervous as well. I have done a podcast before. Actually I did one for my nephew a few years ago. And it was fun. It was a lot of fun.

Matthew Mickens: And I think this will be a good time. So yeah the point you raised about space we actually, here at NASA are learning about it ourselves. I don’t think a lot of us actually know everything that we need to know about it. We’re constantly getting new information and learning new things about it.

Matthew Mickens: Yeah. Being a plant scientist at NASA. It’s a really cool job. And of course, as you mentioned, it’s all about using concepts in controlled environment agriculture to grow crops as fresh food options for astronauts. That’s pretty much it. Plant scientists in general, I think we sit in a unique realm between, botany and horticulture.

Matthew Mickens: But as plant scientists, we take what botanists know. And what horticulturists do, and we design experiments to answer questions [00:03:00] about plants. In my case, most of my efforts revolve around the question, what does it take to grow crops in space?

Matthew Mickens: Considering, the five basic needs for plants, we know that plants, in order to grow, need light, an atmosphere, water, nutrients and a substrate or soil. But as plant scientists, we study what happens when you change one or two of these variables while keeping the others constant.

Matthew Mickens: Controlled environments allow us to do this nicely. However, even in controlled environments, these variables behave very differently in space than they do on earth. My role pretty much as a plant scientist here at NASA is to solve the challenge of growing plants in conditions or locations where they have never been grown before. And I know that sounds very star trackish, but essentially that’s what we do.

Ruchika Kashyap: When I was preparing for this podcast, I was like, there’s so many questions that are coming up into my mind. And you answered most of them. And they were like, why do we need to produce food in space?

Ruchika Kashyap: And the answer is we need to provide fresh food for our [00:04:00] astronauts, right? That’s there in that one line, everything, the mission, the goal of a plant scientist at NASA. But I’m curious, this is the nerdy me who doesn’t know about space asking, are you also exploring ways to grow food on moon, Mars and beyond, or something like that?

Matthew Mickens: Definitely, NASA has plans to establish a presence on the moon, we are going back to the moon. And we do have plans to go to Mars. We actually call it the Moon to Mars campaign.

Matthew Mickens: We even have a whole Mars campaign, office and program that sponsors a lot of the technologies that we work with. However, in order to get to, either of these destinations, we actually have to travel through space. So for instance, a trip to the moon is, it’s not that bad, right?

Matthew Mickens: It takes about three days roughly. Not much time to grow food, but if you’re thinking about like a trip to Mars, which is, seven to nine months a lot of the diet for the crew will be a packaged diet, supplementing the packaged diet with fresh food during the trip, I think is going to be super important.

Matthew Mickens: From a [00:05:00] nutritional standpoint, a lot of health promoting, like, secondary metabolites are best when they’re consumed fresh. But also even from a behavioral health standpoint crops provide varieties and flavors, colors, aromas. And, they counteract the condition known as menu fatigue.

Matthew Mickens: The crew, usually they have a tendency to get tired of eating the same thing, and they actually often lose weight. Lastly, when we’re thinking about planetary surface production, say for instance, when we get to Mars, we are intending on using crop production on the moon to practice for that.

Matthew Mickens: And so I think both are actually important.

Ruchika Kashyap: Wow. My mind is thinking about all these possibilities right now. Moon, in three days, and Mars in seven to eight months. Definitely we need food for our astronauts. 

Ruchika Kashyap: Even we are so busy in our 8 to 5 work mode, we don’t have time to produce fresh food for us. This is the reality, we just go for the packaged and ready to eat meals and stuff like that. The goal for production in both space and earth is fresh food [00:06:00] basically. And that’s how I like toconnect these two. You brought another good point that growing plants, there are a lot of disciplines involved, right? Yes. So there is a plant scientist, a horticulture person, a biologist. Each of these disciplines are specific and then they know basically what’s going behind and what could be done better. So I often joke about it when my friends come to my house and they’re like you don’t have any plants. You are a plant scientist. I’m like, I’m so bad at taking care of plants.

Ruchika Kashyap: So You are a plant pathologist. That’s literally your job to save plants from diseases. I’m like, there’s so many things on the background.

Matthew Mickens: Yeah. It’s a little different being a scientist and , actually having the skill to grow crops it’s a different skillset.

Matthew Mickens: It’s crazy to wrap your head around it. I should be a good grower. I’m a plant scientist. I have a couple plants on my patio, it’s not what you would expect. I’m a NASA plant scientist. You should have a whole garden, on your patio, but [00:07:00] I don’t.

Ruchika Kashyap: I’m literally the same. Growing a plant is an art, and. I might be good at saving it from diseases, but I’m not good at providing them nutrition, which is taking care of the physiology of that plant.

Ruchika Kashyap: So growing food in space might be even tougher, I assume, because it’s dealing with zero or microgravity, controlled lighting, limited resources. And then I don’t know how big the spaceships are. I’m just imagining so many factors apart from just the normal factors that comes into play when we grow food.

Ruchika Kashyap: So how does that work?

Matthew Mickens: You’re absolutely right. As far as the actual space environment microgravity, the problem with having, gravity is the impact, for instance, on fluids and air movement, which are both very important for growing crops. In space, surface tension forces usually tend to dominate with the absence of gravity. So for example, oxygen doesn’t dissolve very well into water. And plant [00:08:00] roots need oxygen. But also when you think about it there’s no convection when there’s no gravity hot air rising and cool dense air getting pulled back down by gravity. This doesn’t happen in space this is the main driving force for our weather here on earth.

Matthew Mickens: But in space, there’s a lack of convection and it usually causes gases to kind of form spherical envelopes around objects. Which could actually be problematic for plants. Plants produce oxygen, as a byproduct of photosynthesis. If they don’t have adequate ventilation fans to, break up and mix up the air around them, they can’t readily access the CO2- the carbon dioxide that is required for their growth. And so they essentially will suffocate. And what we’ve actually seen is that some of them start to force liquid out of their leaves. If they can’t transpire water vapor, they’ll force the liquid out of their leaves, which is a process called guttation if they don’t have the adequate ventilation and airflow. In terms of lighting for instance. So in space, you can’t just open a window and say, I’m gonna get sunlight today. ‘ cause electric lighting is usually, [00:09:00] via LEDs is what we prefer. And that’s what we’ve been using. But yes, just direct sunlight is really pretty deadly, ’cause we, without the protection of our atmosphere, that blocks harmful UV and high energy radiation.

Matthew Mickens: We want to use some form of electric lighting. And as far as limited resources in space, nASA has acronyms for everything. And the best way I’ve come to remember it, so MVP WW, and so what is that? I think of MVP, like we normally associate with most valuable players, right?

Matthew Mickens: So the most valuable players in terms of limited resources are mass volume and power. That’s our MVP. Oh, wow. And then also you can throw in water and waste, right? Water is a limited resource. Waste is actually something you want to keep limited, right? The more resources you, reuse or recycle, the better.

Matthew Mickens: And I would actually throw crew time in there as well. Crew time is the time astronauts have available to do tasks. In their isolation, they actually have a lot of things to do, right? As opposed to, keeping systems running, they don’t really have the time, to grow crops so we [00:10:00] want to make sure that we’re mindful of crew time, that is a limited resource.

Matthew Mickens: Now in addition to microgravity, there are also other gravities as well, right? So for instance, crop production on a planetary surface alleviate some of the issues caused by microgravity. So when you think about it, the moon is one sixth of earth’s gravity, Mars is, three eighths Earth’s gravity.

Matthew Mickens: And it’s strange how it works out. For instance, three is actually 38%, and one six is actually 16%. It’s almost like it’s meant to be for us to go to these places. That itself has an impact on things like atmospheric pressure, that we actually still don’t fully understand as far as the impacts of reduced atmospheric pressure on plants. And then lastly, considering when we get to the point where we can have surface habitats, we have to be mindful of things that we launch here from Earth, for instance that’s mass, right? Mass that we launch from Earth usually translates into dollar amounts. Everything that spend money on launching into space is our tax. Paid money, right? That’s tax dollars. And I think we keep that low.

Ruchika Kashyap: Definitely it seems [00:11:00] like it’s a rocket science, literally to grow food on a rocket. And so many factors like mass volumes, pressure, workforce water and waste. If we talk about the production cycle in itself, from handling the seed to harvesting, there are critical training and learning steps involved. Even handling the seeds because they’re so tiny, might be an issue. And then you talked about how time of. Every astronaut is a limited resource. So are there trainings for astronauts to help them learn all these factors?

Ruchika Kashyap: Because they’re not plant scientists, right? 

Matthew Mickens: Yeah. Most of them, not a lot of them are pilots, essentially. But I will say, so yes, astronauts always get what we call crew procedures. For every task that they’re required to do sometimes they probably get too many but, that does, include formal training.

Matthew Mickens: That means that, they watch videos or they have a ground support team that watches them to ensure that they follow tasks. And then of course the crew actually has tablets [00:12:00] on hand, that they use very often. They always have a tablet, to work with or to work on.

Ruchika Kashyap: So like any other project, it’s a multidisciplinary and multi people project. You need hands, you need all these trainings to make sure that the, astronauts are well trained. And then moving back to the thing we talked about: food waste and handling food in general.

Ruchika Kashyap: If you can go into a little bit of specifics, how tough it is to handle and harvest food or store seeds. Where does the food waste go? How is it disposed of? 

Matthew Mickens: normally I think there’s a short term way that they store food, but there’s not like a dedicated fridge. So for instance, in the case of the International Space Station, if they grow food, a lot of times before they eat it, they have to send it back to Earth so that we can, run food safety checks on it to make sure that it’s safe to eat.

Matthew Mickens: A lot of that food gets stored in a minus 80 freezer and then it gets brought back down to Earth. As far as their general food [00:13:00] waste, usually food waste is discarded, in the traditional trash or waste system on orbit.

Matthew Mickens: And then usually that waste is placed inside of a Cygnus capsule and then it is jettisoned back to earth and it actually burns up in the atmosphere. So the waste returns to earth as ashes and gases, so to speak. 

Ruchika Kashyap: That’s interesting. And very smart. You talked about food safety. So the pathologist in me, could not resist, ask you like, it’s a controlled environment and microclimates can be conducive to plant pathogens too, right? Are you also working on these aspects of potential plant diseases that could happen in space shuttles and space and also some insect tissues, are there trainings for that too?

Matthew Mickens: This is a very good question. Because plant pathogens, that’s actually something we’ve encountered in space, believe it or not. Not necessarily in terms of pests, we are definitely evaluating the future risk of something like this happening. God forbid we don’t want any kind of plant [00:14:00] pest. But pathogens is actually something we encountered back in 2016, we grew flowers in the veggie chamber. Basically to test if we could grow a long duration crop from seed to and then to seed again.

Matthew Mickens: And during that growth period, at some point the fans were turned off. The plants became very stressed. Couldn’t transpire, and were eventually attacked by an opportunistic fungus. It was a fungus that was already hanging around on the international Space station.

Matthew Mickens: And four out of the six plants actually died. Two of them survived and went on the flower. Since that happened I’m now working on a way to assess risk before we launch things to space.

Matthew Mickens: I’m using some of the skills I’ve acquired in the industry. For instance, the principle of HACCP, which is hazard analysis for critical control points. There’s a program you can implement to approve suppliers and analyze raw materials such as, seeds and substrates before they’re launched.

Matthew Mickens: So you can reduce the risk of, plant pathogens becoming an issue in space. 

Ruchika Kashyap: The [00:15:00] hazard risk analysis is so important, we wanna know what is out there. And then also seeing how different critical points could be hazards, because controlled environment is so diverse, and one of them is space. So you really need to do surveys and intense critical control point risk assessments to know what could be entry point of that pathogen. 

Matthew Mickens: Exactly. Every step in the process, we analyze all the risks and ways to mitigate the risk.

Matthew Mickens: Before we start the process of production. We already have everything, mapped out and, SOPs and implementing different programs to mitigate the risk. 

Ruchika Kashyap: What I’m thinking is growing food in space is basically just another controlled environment, we are dealing with all the lightning and nutrition parameters and also trying to prevent the diseases. Connecting it back to earth, since there are so many overlaps, right? So there is lot to learn from the space farming.

Ruchika Kashyap: But before all this, [00:16:00] something I wanna know is how you joined as a plant scientist in NASA. What was your journey like? 

Matthew Mickens: Oh, man. This is gonna be a long story. I’ll try to make it short, but I can’t guarantee you. My background I started out with a bachelor’s and master’s in environmental science.

Matthew Mickens: When I was working on my master’s, my advisor at the time planted the seed and told me that, if you wanted to, you could work for NASA. And I’m like, what? Wait a minute, how I’m an environmental science major, like how can I work for NASA?

Matthew Mickens: I’m not trying to be an astronaut, but he said, man, there are so many disciplines that NASA uses. You can get into it in a whole host of ways. It was during my master’s where I got my first NASA scholarship or fellowship through the North Carolina Space Grant Consortium.

Matthew Mickens: I went to school at North Carolina A&T State University. And my thesis project basically was in lighting materials. I was trying to look for materials that [00:17:00] I could integrate into a sensor for UV. At the time, NASA was actually gonna launch one of the Mars rovers to Mars.

Matthew Mickens: And I was like, man, I wonder if they have a way to detect UV at the surface of Mars. And so I studied materials that emit light when exposed to UV, and that started my path. I became a lighting expert. For my PhD I studied, or actually I synthesized materials called phosphors, which are basically the same materials that are incorporated into LEDs, and that’s how you get the different colors.

Matthew Mickens: I studied the interaction of light with matter and spectroscopy, I even took quantum mechanics courses. I had another project for my PhD, working with materials for LEDs. I got a NASA fellowship during my PhD, which funded my last three years of my doctorate.

Matthew Mickens: And it also gave me an opportunity to intern at the Kennedy Space Center when I graduated and I found out that NASA was actually using LEDs to grow plants. And I [00:18:00] found an area, my NASA mentor Ray Wheeler. I reached out to him via email and I actually got a chance to meet him when I was in school and he said, yeah, we have a gap, like we are using LEDs.

Matthew Mickens: He handed me a publication, a study that NASA did to show that plants actually respond to green light. In school we’re taught that plants don’t utilize green light at all. That’s why they’re green, right? They reflect green light.

Matthew Mickens: But that’s not true, and it blew my mind. He was like, no green light can trigger photosynthesis. NASA had a gap. They needed someone with expertise in lighting and light recipes to figure out the best light recipe to grow crops in space.

Matthew Mickens: I’m like I got all these skills with lighting. I wonder if I can fit that into NASA. Here I am, and this is 15 years later, that actually led to me getting a postdoc. When I finished my PhD, I got a postdoc in the NASA postdoc program.

Matthew Mickens: And of course it was with that same mentor who I met Ray Wheeler. And Joy Master, they actually trained me. And that was my first [00:19:00] introduction to CEA. I became a plant scientist because of my expertise in lighting.

Matthew Mickens: And I actually, I published a lot of good work in terms of just, what’s a strategy to find the best light recipe for a crop. While presenting some of my findings at a workshop in Rome my postdoc was coming to an end and I was trying to find a job. I applied for positions at NASA and on the contractor side and I couldn’t get any positions. And so when I was presenting my research, there was a professor in the audience and he asked me, what are you doing after you’re a postdoc? And I was like I’m looking for a job. He introduced me to the founder of a vertical farming company called Elevate Farms. Within a month, they flew me out to see some of their prototype testing systems for a vertical farm.

Matthew Mickens: They wanted to build vertical farms in New Jersey and Canada. Lo and behold, they wanted me to lead the installation of the farm and commence the operation. I’m like, wait a minute. I’m a plant scientist. [00:20:00] I grow things on a benchtop in a growth chamber. I was so terrified. They were like, no, we want you to not only build a farm but lead a whole operation.

Matthew Mickens: And so it was just one of those moments in life where, you’re absolutely terrified, but you still move forward anyway, not knowing what’s gonna happen. That actually led to a position in the indoor vertical farming industry where I built a indoor vertical farm. We actually retrofitted a warehouse. It was a 14,000 square foot warehouse into an indoor farm. Utilizing the skills that I got at NASA and I did that during the pandemic. I was able to, learn a lot of project management, a lot of skills that I had no idea that I would get. And I did that prior to coming back to NASA. So I’ve been at NASA now for two years. NASA was actually looking at. My skillset after, working with the private industry and the commercial CEA space, especially for food safety. I got skills at NASA, I brought ’em to vertical farming, and then I got skills in vertical [00:21:00] farming and then brought ’em back to NASA.

Ruchika Kashyap: So that’s circle of life. 

Matthew Mickens: Exactly. It’s definitely a circle. I came full circle for sure.

Ruchika Kashyap: Listening to your journey, I feel like it’s a perfect example of why skills are important and how it can be utilized to different fields in real life scenarios.

Ruchika Kashyap: And connections matter too. If you put in the hard work and keep going, your skills, your connections, everything will fall into place and life will open doors for you. Honestly, Future of CEA space looks bright to me.

Ruchika Kashyap: Based on what we have talked so far, how can we use these advancements or the work that you’re doing in space biology or CEA space to benefit the communities or CEA industry.

Matthew Mickens: That’s a really good question. In my opinion and experience in CEA, the lessons learned and the transfer of knowledge on best practices it literally goes both ways, honestly. And [00:22:00] many people don’t realize this.

Matthew Mickens: Yes, we’re NASA and we do cool stuff, we don’t know everything. We rely heavily on our academic colleagues, industry partners and nonprofit organizations to teach us just as much as we teach them. Like you mentioned, the core principles of CEA, remain the same no matter the location. This is why when I go to CEA conferences and workshops like the one I met you on, I see a lot of the same groups of people from the same companies, same universities quite often. It’s almost like the CEA community is a close knit family, when you’re thinking about it like on a just worldwide, it’s not really that many of us in terms of just scale compared to the rest of the world.

Matthew Mickens: And so a lot of us actually know each other, who are in the CEA industry. And so here at NASA we actually to keep up. With everyone’s work, everyone’s publications, everyone’s patents just as much as the public try to keep up with what NASA does. And again like one of the reasons I mentioned that [00:23:00] NASA brought me on board for my food safety experience from industry. NASA actually wanted to apply some of the best practices, from commercial CEA to space farming which I think it’s just really cool. 

Ruchika Kashyap: Yeah it’s really cool to see the two-way flow of information. I’m an extension specialist as well, in extension we call it closing the loop because research is important, but taking research out to the farmers or the stakeholders is important too. But also getting feedback from them and then also learning from them and incorporating that feedback into generating research hypothesis. And that’s what you are doing exactly.

Ruchika Kashyap: As we look into the future, both space and on the earth, because they’re not very different. So what do you think the next major milestone could be for growing food in any extreme environment? 

Matthew Mickens: Oh man. Yeah, that’s a really good question. And because commercial, CEA sector, especially, [00:24:00] indoor vertical farms took a big hit during the pandemic, and a lot of them ended up shutting their doors. The light went dim a little bit, but I do think that the commercial CEA sector will recover. I think it’s gonna make a comeback just because it’s needed more than ever now. And extreme environments, it’s almost like there are different factors you can put into that. For instance, the current, I would say even the socioeconomic environment, is probably more of an immediate threat than the climate, if we’re going to rely on commercial, CEA I think we should be mindful, for instance, things like LEDs. Like I know that China is one of the largest ED manufacturers in the world, and now LEDs are going to become more expensive to import to set up these vertical farms.

Matthew Mickens: And along those same lines, I also think it’s important to upon our leaders to promote peace whenever, when and where we can get it. Because I think also conflict and war is a bigger [00:25:00] source of food insecurity than we realize. Bringing it back to space there are collaborations between space and private industries as well as other space agencies.

Matthew Mickens: So right now, as far as, for instance, putting lunar crops or lunar greenhouses on the moon- nASA’s pretty much looking to collaborate. We think that we need to, encompass not just NASA expertise, expertise that reflects the whole world. We actually have collaborations with the German DLR space Institute, as well as the Canadian Space Agency. We have been involved with advising them- they’re working on a lunar agricultural module to grow crops on the moon. It’s not gonna be that big, maybe about 25 square meters. But again, a lot of that depends on. The vision and the budget that we get from the current administration as well as the vision of our newly sworn NASA administrator- a lot of that dictates, what we do in terms of the milestones for NASA [00:26:00] and our future.

Matthew Mickens: But like I mentioned before, I do think that practicing growing crops on the lunar surface will prepare us for the Martian surface. One of the more immediate milestones that I have within my group we’re building the next generation production chamber that will go on a Mars Transit vehicle. It’s called the Ohalo III Chamber. Unlike our previous Grove Chambers known as Veggie or the advanced plant habitat, they were mainly for research on the International Space Station. They were our main research platforms. The ISS has been great. It has been our laboratory and our access to microgravity to actually get to play around with what happens when you grow plants with no gravity.

Matthew Mickens: ISS has been our platform and unfortunately it will be de orbited in the next five years around 2030; we were just informed that there’s a massive budget that’s gonna go into deorbiting the ISS. So we’re still waiting. It’s a lot of uncertainty because that funding has to come from somewhere. And so we’re just waiting to get [00:27:00] direction on how that will impact, the research that we do.

Matthew Mickens: But we do want to get to the point where if we can put a crop production chamber on the Mars transit vehicle or on the moon, we want to be able to grow crops continuously as a dietary supplement, not just for research, but as a dedicated platform for supplementing the diet.

Matthew Mickens: Growing fresh crops, multiple cultivars or even, utilizing the CO2 from the cabin to have that sustainable interaction between plants and the environment, that’s really the main milestones that we have to conquer.

Ruchika Kashyap: It’s amazing to hear your plans and I feel like we can definitely look forward to some Martian forms and lunar greenhouses in the future. 

Matthew Mickens: Definitely.

Ruchika Kashyap: The day is not far, I should say, and staying positive and collaborating is what we can do and learning from each other because there is a lot to learn from.

Ruchika Kashyap: So what would be [00:28:00] your insights or any advices that you wanna give to youth or younger generation? Because CEA is a sector where young people are getting attracted to.

Ruchika Kashyap: Younger farmers are playing a role in not only controlled environments, but urban food production spaces as well. So what would be your advice to all those young buds getting involved in the CEA space? 

Matthew Mickens: The younger generation are actually more involved with NASA than people know. So for instance, one of the challenges is actually crop screening. Like knowing what in the world are we gonna grow, right? There are hundreds to thousands of crops and options, right? But how do you know?

Matthew Mickens: How do you pick, what are you gonna grow, right? And so there are only maybe 20 or 30 of us on the space crop production team here at KSC and way too many crops to go through. So NASA actually has a partnership [00:29:00] with the nonprofit called Fairchild Botanical Gardens, they have what is called a Growing Beyond Earth program where they’ve orchestrated a way to install very simple growth chambers into hundreds of middle school and high school classrooms so that the students can actually test out different crops for us.

Matthew Mickens: We’re leveraging citizen scientists to screen through crops for us. We’ve actually flown at least two crops that were recommendations from the Growing Beyond Earth program. It was a dragon lettuce and I believe a bok choy. But those were recommendations from all of the science experiments that were happening in classrooms.

Matthew Mickens: ‘Cause we figured, if there’s a plant or a crop that’s hardy enough to survive a classroom full of curious students, it’ll definitely survive space. There was a workshop with the students who were involved with the program and they were, presenting some of the things that they did while in the classroom.

Matthew Mickens: And lemme tell you, some of these students, even middle schoolers, were [00:30:00] giving presentations and talks that were way better than any talk I could give.

Ruchika Kashyap: Wow. 

Matthew Mickens: On that note, I think the future is very promising. For those looking to get into the CEA industry, I would tell them to pinpoint an aspect that you like or are talented in and really hone in on, being the best you can be at it. You don’t necessarily have to get a degree in CEA to contribute to it. Like I mentioned earlier, my passion was in lighting science and spectroscopy.

Matthew Mickens: But it just so happened that skillset connected me to growing plants in controlled environments. And again I became a plant scientist. I didn’t start out as one. I would encourage anyone to be mindful that, you don’t have to be born a certain way, but you can become whatever you really want to become.

Matthew Mickens: That’s really the biggest advice I would give.

Ruchika Kashyap: I also like to add on to the younger students I meet, in academia or [00:31:00] anyone looking for advice – you just need to look around. There are so many opportunities, so many people to help you.

Ruchika Kashyap: So many internships, just explore. Look around. Don’t let that curiosity die. NASA is already collaborating and helping younger generations play a role in building the next generation “plant growing force” I would like to call them.

Ruchika Kashyap: Based on the conversations, Matt, you’ve made me so curious that I want to visit NASA Space Station now. Because all I know about space and spaceships is through movies, Netflix, that’s it. I’ve never been to a spaceship but there is always the next time. No, 

Matthew Mickens: I really wish, we were gonna host, the USDA NASA workshop here at Kennedy this year, but unfortunately we had to cancel because the funding wasn’t secure. With all the things going on in the federal government, that would’ve been your ultimate shot, but hopefully, things will improve. When the storm settles a little [00:32:00] bit, we’ll be able to plan for having that workshop here at Kennedy.

Ruchika Kashyap: I was so excited for that one. But we made it work thanks to technology, right?

Ruchika Kashyap: This is what researchers do. They find different ways to navigate providing information and doing research. So wrapping up, we talked a lot about space, plant growing and how it can be connected to earth, but before ending, I always like to do something fun.

Ruchika Kashyap: This last session “Flash it” basically it’s a rapid fire and quick fun round. So I’ll ask you some questions and you’ll just have to answer based on what comes to your mind first. Are you ready?

Matthew Mickens: I’m ready. 

Ruchika Kashyap: If you could grow any plant in space, no restrictions.

Ruchika Kashyap: Matt, what would it be? 

Matthew Mickens: Oh man. That’s a hard one. I’m a big fan of blackberries. I would have to say if it’s possible, seedless blackberries.

Ruchika Kashyap: That’s a good one. How did you think about that? 

Matthew Mickens: We have a collaboration with USDA, there are [00:33:00] efforts on some gene edited efforts to… it’s called gene editing and you can breed our blackberries to be not only seedless, but thornless, but also dwarf. So I don’t know, we’re gonna try to see what we can do. That actually might happen, but, I’ll stop right there for now.

Ruchika Kashyap: What’s one food you would miss the most if you lived on the moon or Mars for a year? 

Matthew Mickens: Oh man. Hands down, I know you said one food, but I would have to say bacon and eggs.

Ruchika Kashyap: Okay. Okay. I give you that. 

Matthew Mickens: Yeah. It’s like I love bacon, but I have to have eggs, I have to have bacon and eggs. Can’t just have one. 

Ruchika Kashyap: That’s a good combo. Let me put you on spot for this next one. Would you rather be the first farmer on Mars, or run the Earth’s largest urban farm?

Matthew Mickens: Oh, man. I think I already did one of those, but I would say if I could come back, [00:34:00] I would say Mars. If I could come back. 

Ruchika Kashyap: That’s a very smart answer. If you had to describe space farming in one word, what would it be? 

Matthew Mickens: Ooh. Possible

Ruchika Kashyap: Ends of possibilities, for sure.

Ruchika Kashyap: Favorite plant space character that you think should be part of a sci-fi movie?

Matthew Mickens: Oh man, that’s a good one. ‘Cause being the nerd that I am, when there’s a space movie, and they have space crops, I’m always looking like, how are they growing the food?

Matthew Mickens: Probably the Jolly Green Giant, if that will count. 

Ruchika Kashyap: I love this segment. It brings up different parts of the personality and also helps think about our research in different angles, that we never think about.

Matthew Mickens: Yeah, absolutely.

Ruchika Kashyap: So any closing thoughts, Matt, that you would like to share with our listeners or anybody in the CEA world ? 

Matthew Mickens: First off thanks for having me, Dr. R. This was great. And I hope the listeners got something out [00:35:00] of today’s convo. It’s always a pleasure for me to, inform the world of what we do here at the Kennedy Space Center.

Matthew Mickens: And I guess to remind everyone that, NASA has been doing this for almost 40 years. The principles of CEA have been around for decades. There are a lot of new technologies and new aspects, but the actual core principles have been around for a long time.

Matthew Mickens: I feel like it’s my duty, to continue to contribute to the industry. Not just for NASA’s benefit, but for all mankind, because what we do to advance space has direct benefit here on Earth. So I’ll close with that. 

Ruchika Kashyap: Dr. Mickens. This has been such an enlightening discussion. Thank you for being a part of my podcast show, Urban Pods. Space farming isn’t just about preparing the future of humanity beyond Earth. It’s about optimizing and revolutionizing how we grow food today. Making [00:36:00] agriculture more resilient, sustainable, and accessible.

Ruchika Kashyap: Whether it’s growing crops in your backyard, a high-tech vertical farm, or a controlled environment space, habitat, like a space shape or martian land, the fundamental principles remains the same. Thank you so much for sharing your insights with us. It’s been absolute pleasure having you on Urban Pods.

Ruchika Kashyap: For our listeners. I hope this episode has sparked some curiosity about how scientific innovations in space can transform food systems on the ground. Be sure to follow urban pods for deeper dives into urban and controlled environment agriculture. Stay tuned for our next episode where we continue to explore the fascinating world of food production, science and sustainability. Until next time, keep growing, keep learning, and keep feeding the future. I’m Dr. R, and this is Urban Pods, where science meets people. Thank you.