New Crops, Health Research Proposals to Help NASA Advance Exploration

NASA has selected 12 new investigations to help support human explorers in space, announced Sep 14, 2026. Six awards are food-focused under the agency's Space Crops grants, advancing NASA's goal of harnessing plants to enhance quality of life in space and enable lunar and Mars exploration. Four space crops proposals focus on edible plants and how their growth, physiology, and associated microbial communities are affected by environmental conditions in space or on other planetary bodies. Another examines mechanisms by which resurrection plants can withstand extreme, dry conditions. The last builds on previous International Space Station studies to uncover functions of algal genes—DNA segments controlling algae survival—whose expression is modified by spaceflight. These studies can help integrate biological-based solutions into space life-support systems.

The other six proposals fall under the Biological and Physical Sciences Division's precision health focus, which seeks to unravel the mechanisms by which space exploration affects health and well-being. One studies how lunar dust exposure impacts respiratory, immune, and inflammation responses. A second identifies repurposed drugs that can mitigate the effects of space travel on health and physiology. Two examine how radiation combined with other stressors affects age-relevant characteristics across various organ and physiological systems. The final two assess molecular and cellular changes induced by space stressors that can alter gene expression or protein function. Together the research aims to identify ways to mitigate health issues and develop early-warning detection systems to notify crew of potential concerns.

The principal investigators conducting the space biology studies come from 10 institutions across eight states, and nine of the awards are going to investigators receiving Space Biology Program funding for the first time. The listed investigators and projects include Jannell Bazurto of the University of Minnesota, Cultivating the Cosmos: Investigating Plant-Microbe Dynamics for Sustainable Space Farming; Miranda Haus of Michigan State University, Investigating Legume Crop Rotations and Microbial Interactions in Regolith Simulants; Andrew Settles of NASA Ames Research Center, Genetic Mitigation of Spaceflight Stressors on Production of Chlamydomonas; and Christopher Taylor of Ohio State University, Hydroponic Microbes in a Low Carbon, High-Radiation Environment; Identifying the Genetic Determinants of Water- and Plant-Associated Microbial Survival in Extraterrestrial Env.