Scientists at Germany’s Neumayer Station III, in Antarctica, have harvested their first crop of vegetables grown without soil, daylight or pesticides as part of a project designed to help astronauts cultivate fresh food on other planets. They picked about eight pounds of salad greens, 18 cucumbers and 70 radishes grown inside a high-tech greenhouse as outside temperatures dropped to minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit. NASA has successfully grown greens on the International Space Station, but the Antarctic project aims to produce a wider range of vegetables that might one day be grown on the moon or on Mars.

This article appears in the December 2018 issue of Natural Awakenings.