Sometime in the 2040s, humans may well reach a new frontier – Mars. To get there, we’ll need sustainable sources of food, medicines and materials.

As researchers who work on engineering plants to produce such resources in space, we sometimes get asked: “why?”. With issues such as climate change, inequality, global pandemics and environmental degradation, shouldn’t we be focused on Earth, not Mars?

But science can do both. And space research has a long history of not only satisfying the human instinct of exploration, but delivering transformational new inventions as we make discoveries along the way.

When the results of scientific research flow into the real world in practical ways, this is known as “research translation”.

These translations are often unexpected and unpredictable. For example, NASA’s need for compact, lightweight imaging technology in space led to the invention of the compact camera sensors we now have in smartphones, webcams, medical devices and more.

That shiny, reflective material used to deflect heat from buildings, appliances or even your car windshield? It’s an insulation technology perfected by NASA to protect spacecraft and astronauts from temperature fluctuations in space.

Within the next decade, we could see “space plants” directly and indirectly improving life on Earth. So what might space-ready plants look like........

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