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10 Years of Students Helping NASA Grow Space Food with Growing Beyond Earth

✇NASA Breaking News
21 November 2025 at 13:25

3 min read

10 Years of Students Helping NASA Grow Space Food with Growing Beyond Earth

Student from 71 Classrooms engaged with NASA scientists to learn about how their Growing Beyond Earth research is contributing to feeding astronauts for long distance space travel.
Students from 71 Classrooms engaged with NASA scientists to learn about how their Growing Beyond Earth research is contributing to feeding astronauts for long distance space travel.

Nearly 1,250 middle and high school students from 71 schools around the world joined Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden for the Growing Beyond Earth (GBE) Student Launch Chat with the Scientists, marking an inspiring milestone in the program’s 10th anniversary year.

The live session, held in collaboration with NASA, connected classrooms directly with Dr. Gioia Massa and Trent M. Smith, senior leaders of NASA Kennedy Space Center’s Space Crop Production team. Students heard firsthand how their classroom experiments are helping NASA identify and grow the best crops for future astronauts on long-duration missions to the Moon and Mars.

“Our students are contributing to real NASA science,” said one participating teacher. “It’s incredibly motivating for them to know their data could influence what astronauts eat in space someday.”

Connecting Classrooms with NASA Science

Growing Beyond Earth, led by Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Miami, Florida, brings authentic NASA research into classrooms in a way that few science programs can. For more than a decade, the 83-acre botanic garden – renowned for its conservation, education, and research programs – has worked hand-in-hand with NASA to advance understanding of food production in space.

Students use specially designed plant growth chambers to test how different crops perform under conditions that mimic spacecraft environments. The data they collect are shared with NASA scientists, who use the findings to refine ongoing space crop production research.

Since the program’s inception, more than 120,000 students across 800+ classrooms have tested over 250 plant cultivars, with five student-tested crops already grown aboard the International Space Station.

Cultivating the Future STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, & Mathematics) Workforce

The Growing Beyond Earth project exemplifies the mission of NASA’s Science Activation (SciAct) program, which connects NASA Science with people of all ages and backgrounds in ways that activate minds and promote a deeper understanding of our world and beyond, with the ultimate Vision: To increase learners’ active participation in the advancement of human knowledge. By engaging students as active participants in cutting-edge research, projects like GBE not only advance NASA’s goals but also cultivate curiosity, creativity, and confidence in the next generation of scientists and explorers. This year’s GBE Student Launch Chat celebrated that impact, showing how student research from classrooms around the globe contributes to the future of space exploration.

“When students see themselves as part of NASA’s mission, they realize science isn’t something distant, it’s something they can do,” said Dr. Massa. Teacher Espy Rodriguez from Hialeah Senior High School said, “It made their [her students] projects matter. I think it gave the kids a real sense of community. We are far, but we are one.” By growing plants, analyzing data, and sharing results with NASA, these students are helping humanity prepare for life beyond Earth, proving that the seeds of tomorrow’s discoveries are being planted in today’s classrooms.

GBE is supported by NASA under cooperative agreement award number 80NCCS2M0125 and is part of NASA’s Science Activation Portfolio. Learn more about how Science Activation connects NASA science experts, real content, and experiences with community leaders to do science in ways that activate minds and promote deeper understanding of our world and beyond: https://science.nasa.gov/learn/about-science-activation/.

www.fairchildgarden.org/gbe

NASA Helps Connect Astronomers and Community Colleges Across the Nation

✇NASA Breaking News
26 September 2025 at 13:18

3 min read

NASA Helps Connect Astronomers and Community Colleges Across the Nation

The NASA Community College Network (NCCN) and the American Astronomical Society (AAS) have teamed up to provide an exciting and impactful program that brings top astronomy researchers into the classrooms of community colleges around the United States.

The Harlow Shapley Visiting Lectureship Program, named for astronomer Harlow Shapley (1885-1972), has a history dating back to the 1950s, when it provided support for a scientist to give a series of astronomy-themed lectures at a college or university, coupled with a public talk to the local community. In 2024, AAS partnered with NCCN to broaden the impact of the Shapley lectureship program to community colleges, making use of NCCN’s existing network of 260 college instructors across 44 states and 120 participating Subject Matter Experts (SME) to “matchmake” community colleges with astronomers.

NCCN has supported the teaching of astronomy at community college since 2020. Community colleges serve a vital role in STEM education, with one-third of their students being first-generation college attendees and 64% being part-time students working jobs and raising families. Factor in that up to 40% of students taking introductory astronomy courses nationally each year do so at a community college, and the motivation behind NCCN and the initiatives of the AAS become clear.

In 2024, the pilot collaboration between NCCN and the AAS matched two community colleges — Chattanooga State Community College in Tennessee and Modesto Junior College in California — with SMEs from University of Virginia and Stanford University. In 2025, nine NCCN subject matter experts are engaging with 14 community colleges in six states. They are:

Joe Masiero (Caltech) at Grossmont Community College CA
Vivian U (Caltech) at Scottsdale & Chandler Gilbert Community Colleges AZ
Dave Leisawitz (NASA) & Michael Foley (Harvard) at Elgin Community College IL
Michael Rutkowski (MN State) at Dallas Area Colleges (five colleges) TX
Joe Masiero (Caltech) at Mt. San Jacinto College, Menifee Campus CA
Quyen Hart (STScI) at Casper College WY
Nathan McGregor (UCSC) at Yakima Valley College WA
Patrick Miller (Hardin-Simmons) at Evergreen Valley College CA
Kim Arcand (Harvard-Smithsonian) at Anne Arundel Community College MD
Natasha Batalha (NASA) at Modesto Junior College CA

Each visit of an AAS Shapley Lecturer is unique. The center of each event is the public Shapley Lecture, which is broadly advertised to the local community. Beyond the Shapley Lecture itself, host institutions organize a variety of local engagement activities – ranging from star parties and classroom visits to meeting with college deans and faculty – to make the most of their time with the Shapley Lecturer.

Astronomy instructor James Espinosa from Weatherford College said, “[The visiting Shapley Lecturer’s] visit made a permanent change in how my classes will be taught, in the sense that ‘honors’ projects will be available for ambitious students. I intend to keep in touch with him for several years to come, which is a big impact for our present and future students.”

Dr. Tom Rice, AAS Education Program Manager and AAS lead on the partnership with NCCN, stated, “The AAS’s Harlow Shapley Visiting Lectureship Program represents one of the most impactful ways that astronomers can share our scientific understanding with the widest possible audience, and I am very proud that we have partnered with the SETI Institute and NASA to bring astronomers to their network of community colleges.”

NCCN is supported by NASA under cooperative agreement award number 80NSSC21M0009 and is part of NASA’s Science Activation Portfolio. Learn more about how Science Activation connects NASA science experts, real content, and experiences with community leaders to do science in ways that activate minds and promote deeper understanding of our world and beyond: https://science.nasa.gov/learn/about-science-activation/.

Montage of images of scientists during their visits as Shapley Lecturers. A scientist gives a presentation showing images of a spacecraft and the Sun. A scientist talks to a college instructor, and another scientist poses for a photo with an instructor.
Shapley Lecturers in action.
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