Space Horticulture as a Green Shield: Life Force Foods and the Vedic Nexus for Deep-Space Astronaut Sustenance
Abstract
Sustaining human crews through multi-year interplanetary missions demands a food and life-support paradigm that extends far beyond calorie provisioning. This review synthesizes the emerging discipline of Space Horticulture — defined as the sovereign confluence of plant science, survival engineering, and human sustenance dedicated to nourishing, healing, and psychologically anchoring astronauts across long-duration deep-space journeys — and situates it within contemporary aerospace bioregenerative research, plant stress physiology, and ancient Vedic nutritional philosophy. Drawing on internationally established programmes, including the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Veggie and Advanced Plant Habitat platforms, the NASA Deep Space Food Challenge, the European Space Agency (ESA) Micro-Ecological Life Support System Alternative (MELiSSA), and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Compact Research Module for Orbital Plant Studies (CROPS), the paper traces the transition from mechanical life-support hardware toward closed-loop, bioregenerative ecosystems. It further reviews recent empirical evidence on plant physiological responses to microgravity, altered gravity, and ionising radiation; the emergence of duckweed (Wolffia spp.) as a rapid-cycle protein crop; comparative water-use efficiency of aeroponic and hydroponic cultivation; lunar and Martian regolith bio-conditioning strategies; the documented psychological benefits of crew horticultural activity; and the radioprotective role of dietary phytochemicals. The review then presents, in detail, the author's own three-dimensional (3D) printed nutrient-delivery research reported in the Dr. Jadala Shankaraswamy's book, Space Horticulture (Narendra Publishing House, 2026, ISBN 978-93-7763116-1) — believed to be the first global attempt at fabricating plant-based, fast-dissolving oral dispersible films (ODF) from shelf-stable powders of underutilised ethnic vegetables, namely Spine Gourd (Momordica dioica), Chekurmanis (Sauropus androgynus), and Alternanthera (Alternanthera sessilis), bound with Moringa gum and stimulated by Roselle (Hibiscus sabdariffa) calyx powder. The films demonstrated a saliva dissolution time of 115.55 ± 2.00 seconds, tensile strength of 1.394 ± 0.06 kg/mm², swelling index of 43.68 ± 2.55%, and were characterised by High-Resolution Liquid Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (HR-LCMS) to contain 136 bioactive phytochemicals, Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS) confirming 11 essential minerals, and Mass Spectrometry Quadrupole Time-of-Flight (MS-QTOF) profiling identifying 17 amino acids. These findings are interpreted as a mucosal, crumb-free nutrient delivery route uniquely suited to countering microgravity-induced gastrointestinal ('space-gut') malabsorption while simultaneously supplying radioprotective phytochemical load. The review concludes with a forward look toward lunar and Martian horticultural infrastructure including regolith bio-conditioning, aeroponic and hydroponic cultivation, robotic 3D-printed habitat construction, and India's Bharatiya Antariksha Station and Vision 2047 roadmap — arguing that the fusion of Vedic Prana-centred nutritional philosophy with cutting-edge additive food-manufacturing technology and validated plant-stress science constitutes a credible and culturally-rooted pathway toward Earth-independent, psychologically resilient deep-space food systems.
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Introduction
As crewed exploration extends from low-Earth orbit toward the Moon and Mars, mission durations expand from months to years, rendering the pre-packaged, freeze-dried food paradigm of the twentieth century increasingly untenable [1], [2]. Stored space food undergoes progressive degradation of heat-sensitive vitamins, palatability, and psychological acceptability over multi-year transit, a limitation now widely recognised across the astronaut nutrition literature [1]–[3]. In response, space agencies have shifted strategic emphasis from carrying finite food inventories to cultivating living, self-renewing biological systems — a transition this review terms the movement from 'picnic basket' logistics to 'cosmic farming'.
Space Horticulture, as proposed and defined in the Dr. Jadala Shankaraswamy's book Space Horticulture: A Future Green Shield with Life Force Foods (Narendra Publishing House, 2026, ISBN 978-93-7763116-1), is "the emerging, sovereign, and irreplaceable discipline at the confluence of plant science, survival engineering, and human sustenance ... with the singular and non-negotiable purpose of sustaining, nourishing, healing, and psychologically anchoring the human crew across the entirety of long-duration interplanetary missions" [4]. This definition deliberately positions horticulture not as a supplementary comfort but as a life-critical subsystem furnishing oxygen regeneration, water purification, medicinal compounds, and — through the Vedic lens explored later in this review — a tether of psychological and spiritual continuity with Earth [4].
Conclusion
Space Horticulture is maturing from a demonstration science — proving that seeds germinate and leaves unfurl in microgravity — into an integrated engineering discipline encompassing bioregenerative life-support, validated plant-stress physiology, precision nutrient manufacturing, and culturally-informed crew psychological support. The reviewed 3D-printed oral dispersible film research, documented in the Dr. Jadala Shankaraswamy's book Space Horticulture (Narendra Publishing House, 2026, ISBN 978-93-7763116-1), offers a concrete, characterised, and potentially scalable technology addressing microgravity-specific nutrient-delivery and radioprotective constraints, while the accompanying Vedic 'Green Shield' and 'Life Force Foods' framework contributes a novel philosophical scaffold for understanding astronaut nutrition beyond caloric sufficiency — a framework now independently corroborated by empirical literature on plant stress biology, duckweed protein crops, astronaut psychological response, dietary radioprotection, and regolith cultivation engineering.
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