Christian Sallaberger wants to build a greenhouse on the moon. “Tang and freeze-dried ice cream don’t really cut it for real missions,” said Sallaberger, president and chief executive officer of Canadensys Aerospace. His company is taking the first tentative steps on a project that will one day, he hopes, grow fresh fruit and vegetables on the lunar surface.

In late 2024, working with researchers at the University of Guelph, Canadensys started putting barley and oat plants to the test in conditions similar to those likely to be found in a greenhouse on the moon. The plants survived a simulated night, where temperatures were brought down to the low single digits Celsius to mimic the harsh conditions a lunar greenhouse would have to withstand during the night. In another experiment in a hypobaric chamber to test a plant tray and nutrient disinfection system, researchers successfully grew barley and oat plants at an atmospheric pressure half that of Earth’s.

The ability to grow fresh produce on the moon is crucial for planned human exploration of the solar system—but it’s a gargantuan task. The moon has almost no atmosphere to protect astronauts from cosmic radiation and the temperature swings from 120°C in the day to -130°C at night. Lunar nights are also two weeks long, meaning plants have to survive for two weeks in an unthinkably cold, dark desert. 

Solving these problems is becoming somewhat urgent. NASA and partner agencies, including the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), are expected to launch the first space station orbiting the moon in the next few years as part of the Artemis program. The first crewed mission to the moon since 1972 is planned for 2027. The Artemis campaign is aiming not only to explore the moon for scientific discoveries, but to learn to live outside Earth in preparation for human exploration on Mars.

Canadensys, along with Guelph and McGill universities, has funding from the Canadian and German space agencies to build lunar greenhouse essentials, including lighting, nutrient delivery and plant health monitoring systems, and even a robotic assistant to keep things running. Germany’s space agency is also developing components for the project. On Friday, the company said it had received the go-ahead from the CSA for further work on the project.

Founded in 2013, Bolton, Ont.-based Canadensys is also building Canada’s first lunar rover, slated to go to the moon in 2029. In July it was selected for the initial development of Canada’s one-tonne lunar utility rover, a larger vehicle that could assist astronauts during moonwalks and handle logistical tasks, which is the country’s major infrastructure contribution to NASA’s Artemis program. 

David Saint-Jacques, a CSA astronaut and deputy director of the agency’s lunar exploration program, said lunar food production is a priority for the agency, and something it hopes to contribute to the Artemis program. “We’ve identified it as a good match to our national capabilities, a good match to our desires on the ground for improvement in technology,” he said. “And it’s clearly something humanity is not gonna go to Mars without.”

Saint-Jacques said the CSA also expects the resulting technologies could be applied on Earth to address food insecurity in northern and remote communities, and reduce Canada’s reliance on food imports by enabling year-round farming, even in harsh conditions.

Food is the “main limiting variable in the duration of human space exploration,” said Mike Dixon, director of Guelph’s Controlled Environment Systems Research Facility, which hosts the hypobaric chamber. On missions lasting months or even years, it would be impractical and costly for space agencies to pack a rocket ship full of food. Fresh food also has psychological benefits for astronauts and plants grown in space would also contribute to life-support systems, cleaning the air and water of a future lunar base—something the International Space Station does mechanically.

Connor Kiselchuk, space exploration life scientist at Canadensys, said the greenhouse will require a hydroponic system to eliminate waste, with systems that capture and reuse water. That’s efficient, but also problematic. With plants growing so close together, and sharing the same water and nutrient delivery loop, a pathogen that infects one plant can quickly spread through the whole system.

Researchers at the University of Guelph pioneered a water disinfectant system, piloted in February and March, that uses electrochemistry to reduce the microbial presence in the water while also not producing any toxic residues, something that Kiselchuk said has significant commercialization spin-off potential on Earth.

The greenhouse will also need autonomous and robotic capabilities so it can be operated remotely and with little human intervention, said David Tunney, director of program formulation at Canadensys.

Tunney said the company has gotten “a lot of benefit” from its work on the small lunar rover, which it built to withstand lunar nights by going into a quasi hibernation mode and restoring full power once the lunar day arrives. It’s something the greenhouse would also likely do in the early years of moon missions, when solar power is the only source available, making power and heat very scarce resources.

“We’re confident now that you can actually drop the power levels really low during the lunar night, subsist through that night and then come out the other side and continue to grow at regular growth rates,” he said.

Then there are the plants themselves. Not every crop is ideal for space. Lunar farms will likely be packed with fast-growing, short and highly nutritious plants that need just the right amount of water—root vegetables like beets, turnips, cucumber and leafy greens like kale, lettuce and arugula are among the plants that meet the criteria.

So why test barley? Guelph’s Dixon, a scotch lover, has a “bucket-list objective” to get barley growing on the moon, and has been lobbying for it since 1995. “Humans, in literally all of our long history, have always ended up [making] alcohol. I was determined it was gonna be the good stuff,” he said.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to remove a photo of an experiment unrelated to the project the story describes.