Document Type
Article
Author ORCID Identifier
Cassandra Palmer https://orcid.org/0009-0009-0220-1432
David Jones https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8564-3114
Journal/Book Title
Agriculture
Publication Date
12-8-2025
Journal Article Version
Version of Record
Publisher
MDPI AG
Volume
15
Issue
24
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Abstract
As humanity prepares for prolonged space missions and future extraterrestrial settlements, developing reliable and resilient food-production systems is becoming a critical priority. Space agriculture, the cultivation of plants beyond Earth (particularly on the Moon and Mars), faces a constellation of interdependent environmental, biological, and engineering challenges. These include limited solar radiation, elevated ionizing radiation, large thermal variability, non-Earth atmospheric pressures, reduced gravity, regolith substrates with low nutrient-holding capacity, high-CO2/low-O2 atmospheres, pervasive dust, constrained water and nutrient availability, altered plant physiology, and the overarching need for closed-loop, resource-efficient systems. These stressors create an exceptionally challenging environment for plant growth and require tightly engineered agricultural systems. This review examines these constraints by organizing them across environmental differences, resource limitations, biological adaptation, and operational demands, emphasizing their systemic interdependence and the cascading effects that arise when one subsystem changes. By integrating findings from planetary science, plant biology, space systems engineering, biotechnology, robotics, and controlled-environment agriculture (CEA), the review outlines current limitations and highlights emerging strategies such as regolith utilization, advanced hydroponics, crop selection and genetic engineering, and the use of robotics, sensors, and artificial intelligence (AI) for monitoring and automation. Finally, the article underscores the broader relevance of space–agriculture research for terrestrial food security in extreme or resource-limited environments, providing a structured foundation for designing resilient and sustainable agricultural systems for space exploration and beyond.
First Page
1
Last Page
47
Recommended Citation
Fazayeli, H.; Daigh, A.L.M.; Palmer, C.; Pitla, S.; Jones, D.; Ge, Y. Space Agriculture: A Comprehensive Systems-Level Review of Challenges and Opportunities. Agriculture 2025, 15, 2541. https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture15242541