Simon Gilroy is a professor of botany at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who regularly designs spaceflight experiments with NASA. When asked if he thinks we are using astrobiological research enough to improve our sustainability on Earth, Professor Gilroy pointed to the discourse around urban farming, an approach which involves moving some elements of cultivation and productivity into cities instead of using agricultural fields.
Speaking to Interesting Engineering, Professor Gilroy observed that urban environments have many of the same problems as growing plants in space, including challenges around water delivery, maintaining environment within the desired parameters and dealing with pathogen outbreaks. “So there’s a lot of technology development going on in space, which has real applications when you come back to thinking about those kinds of applications on Earth,” he noted.