Surprisingly STEM: Microgravity Plant Scientist

Matt Mickens, a NASA horticulturalist, is a pretty fun-gi! In his in-tree-guing role, he researches methods for the unique challenge of growing plants in space! Learn more about how Matt uses light to influence plant growth, shape, and even taste! Matt also talks about his roots as a NASA intern and how his early days at the agency helped grow his career to new heights.

What is said in the film

I'm a plant scientist at NASA, and I look at plants all the time. I look at them everywhere I go because it's ingrained in me to do so. But it's-it's a lot of fun, you know, especially when I can fully understand what it is I'm eating. My name is Dr. Matthew A.

Mickens. My title is Space Crop Production Project Scientist. I support the science required to ensure that our astronauts have fresh food during or while exploring environments where fresh food is not available. For instance, when we go to Mars, we're actually going to ship the food ahead of us. The food can be on the Martian surface for as long as five years before the astronauts even arrive, and it's already been scientifically shown that certain nutrients inside the packaged diet degrade over time.

Microgreens have tons of nutrients and can be a supplement for the packaged diet. Any leafy green crop can be a microgreen. It's just basically you harvest it sooner. For instance, this is garnet giant mustard microgreens. These are six days old.

And so the idea is that microgreens can be a crop for space because they grow quick, but also because it provides an assortment of options for astronauts. Plants and space crops can also be leveraged as a source of life support. They do transpire water vapor into the environment, and so we can actually reclaim that water. They also are a source of oxygen. And so at a high enough density, plants can be used to regenerate the atmosphere either in a space transit vehicle or a surface habitat.

It's hard to quantify, but there's a psychological benefit of having something green and fresh growing in an environment that's harsh and unforgiving. And I believe that the astronauts could attest to this as well, is that having a piece of Earth with them on missions helps their psychological well-being so that it actually contributes to success. My expertise is light recipes using LEDs. I studied how you can use the color of the light to impact not only the growth of the plant, but also the shape of the plant, how fast it grows, and even the flavor of the plant. All of these can be influenced by, you know, the ratios of the colors that you provide for.

The other technology I'm working on is this seed film technology. And this film is actually dissolvable in water. And so as soon as this gets wet, it activates the process of germination immediately. But not only that, but this is a safe way to handle seeds, you know, when there's no gravity. It keeps them all in one place.

It's also a very good way for storing the seeds. And then, of course, the deployment on a substrate would be very simple for astronauts to utilize. When I got my undergrad bachelor's degree in environmental science, I was like, okay, what now? And it was actually my thesis advisor. He told me, he said, Matt, you can work at NASA if you want to.

And I was like, Really? I'm not trying to be an astronaut. He was like, You don't have to be. There's a whole host of other things that support astronauts. And that actually started my whole NASA journey.

My path that led me to NASA started with my master's degree research and my first NASA grant, which was with the North Carolina Space Grant Consortium. When I was working on my Ph. D. , I applied for another grant, and it sponsored a summer where I could actually choose any NASA center of my choosing for an internship experience. And so that summer experience is where I actually met the family at NASA that's in food production.

And that kind of kickstarted my role in controlled environment agriculture. And it was love at first sight. But my path to NASA was not straight at all. After the postdoc, actually, NASA did not choose to hire me, so I actually left for a little bit, went to the private industry sector, and that's usually the case with a lot of things that are worth obtaining in life. There are detours, there are closed doors.

So in due time, the opportunity came open, and I was ready for it, and I took advantage. Advice that I would give to students who want to work at NASA. You can be cut out for anything that you have a passion for, something that will make you want to wake up in the morning when you're-- you know, you're tired. Find something that you like and go after it.

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