China Successfully Grows Vegetables on Space Station

The crew of China's Shenzhou 16 mission successfully grew vegetables aboard the Tiangong space station.

Before returning to Earth on Tuesday, October 31, and handing over station duties to the Shenzhou 17 mission crew, mission commander Jing Haipeng, along with astronauts Zou Yangchao and Jiao Haizhao, worked on cultivating lettuce, cherry tomatoes, and green onions aboard the Tiangong station.

Jing and his team spent time cultivating the vegetables using two sets of specialized equipment. The first planting took place in June when they successfully harvested four batches of crops.

Subsequently, tomatoes and green onions were grown in August.

The China Astronaut Research and Training Center has replicated the exact vegetable cultivation system on Earth, allowing researchers to compare results and analyze differences in plant growth between space and Earth environments.

This is part of a long-term plan to aid deep space exploration.

Yang Renzi, a researcher at the China Astronaut Research and Training Center, explained to CCTV, "This vegetable cultivation system is an essential part of the Environmental Control and Life Support System (ECLSS) used in space to verify related technologies. In the future, we will focus on large-scale and rapid cultivation."

He added, "The system can be applied in the field of deep space exploration, including manned moon landing missions and the creation of a lunar research station called the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) in the next decade, and potentially even sending astronauts to Mars eventually."

Developing these systems is crucial for China as it aims to achieve its goals of sending astronauts to the moon by 2030, establishing a lunar research base, and possibly sending astronauts to Mars in the future.