Author: Aaron Gregory (University of California, Riverside)
07/27/2026 | Reflections
Technobotany & the New Space Race
The space race is a technobotanical frontier that extends several decades of scientific experimentation with plants and seeds launched into orbit. The first plant seeds were sent to space aboard scientific rockets launched in 1946 during military collaborations between the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory and Harvard University, anticipating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and space programs throughout the world rooted in research with plants. Today, an expanding array of plants and photosynthetic technologies orbit Earth on satellites and space stations, enlisted in the new space race and unfurling their foliar canopy toward the cosmos. These plants accompany photosynthetic technologies anticipated to power lunar outposts and Martian colonies expected to extract rare metals and minerals for energy-intensive societies on Earth.
This article extends an emergent field of inquiry I conceptualize as technobotany—the entanglements of botany and technology that shape the nature of science and society. It includes contributions from Science and Technology Studies (STS), History of Science (HOS) and Critical Plant Studies examining the ways in which plants and photosynthesis articulate societal, botanical and technological domains (Gabrys 2025; Meyers 2016; LaPlante 2016; Marder 2013; Houle 2011; Haraway 1999). Beyond the articulation of people and plants, these include cyborgian relations between people, plants and technologies, augmenting and enhancing new ways of being and knowing (Sareen 2026; Downey et al. 1995; Haraway 1985). I draw upon these contributions to consider the implications of technobotany projected upon cosmic domains, unearthing the imaginaries and outer limits of energy-intensive societies (Ojani 2026; Kroløkke & Larsen 2025;Tutton et al. 2024; Timko et al. 2022). Through these strands of scholarship, this article troubles the otherwhere of space as a site of ‘ongoing mutations’ (Praet & Pitrou 2025). The new space race cultivates the mutation of plants grown in space into new photosynthetic technologies designed to power the future of space stations and lunar bases, alongside the mutating evolution of energy-intensive societies on Earth.
This article is a scholarly mixtape drawing upon ‘mixtape methodologies’ developed to critically analyze events and information organized around songs and themes (Saldaña & Stewart 2023; Livingston 2023). Although indebted to communities of color (including my own), this methodological approach is increasingly mobilized to interrogate a range of cultural milieus, invoked here to explore technobotany and its translations within the space race. The article is structured and conceptually guided by songs selected from the Golden Voyager Records developed during the acceleration of the space race in the 1970s. These phonograph records are made of rare metals (gold, copper and nickel) rather than vinyl, providing a soundtrack for the futurities of the space race. Two copies of the Golden Voyager Records were launched on two Voyager spacecrafts in 1977 by NASA, featuring 31 songs from musicians throughout the world. The records were curated by noted astronomer Carl Sagan and a team of ethnomusicologists and sound engineers, including songs composed by humans, whales, weather events, and other more-than-human beings. Songs selected for this article introduce the following themes: plant varieties, life cycles, soil and light.
The Golden Voyager record begins with a twelve minute track featuring sounds intended to tell the story of Earth’s evolution. ‘Sounds of Earth’ begins with the crackling accretion of rocky substrates and gurgling of primordial life rising beneath weather events and climatic shifts that echo the birth of the planet. However, the sounds of biological life are disproportionately compressed in this timeline, displaced by the rise of industrial, urban and technological life signaling the expansion of energy-intensive societies. A cacophony of iron forges, bridled horses, steamships, coal-powered trains, gas-guzzling automobiles, and soaring airplanes anticipate a countdown to the launch of the first space shuttles and space exploration thereafter. This sonic teleology places the space race as an inevitable outcome of planetary and human evolution.
Though intended to tell the story of Earth to other intelligent civilizations in space, these and other songs on the Golden Voyager Records ultimately tell us much more about ourselves. Like a message in a bottle tossed into the sea of space, the tides eventually return these messages to our shores. The same can be said about the technobotanical space race, where experiments with plants and photosynthetic technologies in space tell the story of energy-intensive societies. Although anticipated as the means to escape the ecological and environmental consequences of these societies, space technologies inevitably succumb to the pervasive gravitational force on Earth (Ojani 2026; Redfield 1996). Akin to the rare metals used to manufacture the Golden Voyager Records, the new space race intends to extract rare metals and minerals from the Moon and Mars for Earthly pursuits of power. A selection of the Golden Voyager songs provides sound and structure to the following sections introducing a condensed history of the space race, varieties of flora and soils, and the interplay of light and dark that shape this technobotanical frontier. The reader is encouraged to listen to these songs (via hyperlinks in the text) as sonic guides to the first scholarly mixtape published by Society for Social Studies of Science Backchannels.
Kinds of Flowers
A Javanese song is amongst the first engraved upon the Golden Voyager Records—one particularly favored by Carl Sagan. ‘Kinds of Flowers’ is arranged by the Pura Paku Alaman Palace Orchestra and composed by K.R.T. Wasitodipuro. This traditional Javanese song often accompanies royal entrances, and symbolizes the nine states of existence (Navarasa) combined into Javanese cosmology (Kejawen). These states range from tranquility (Śānta), empathy (Karuṇā), joy (Hāsya), courage (Vīra), anger (Raudra), disgust (Bībhatsa), terror (Bhayānaka), and wonder (Adbhuta). One can only wonder of the experiences encountered by plants launched into orbit during the first space race, germinating in the ruins of World War II during the mid-1900s and blooming within the strange mechanical habitats of satellites and space stations. Their voyages tell us about the experiential states of various plants introduced to the cosmos as experimental subjects—kinds of flowers and plants sent to space that tell us about the blossoming cosmopolitics of technobotany (Stengers 2010; Latour 2004).
The grand entrance of plants to space began with seeds launched into orbit, returned to Earth, and grown as experimental test subjects. The first of these included cotton, corn and rye seeds that accompanied scientific V-2 rockets launched by NASA in 1946 from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. The rockets and launch sciences thereof were developed using Soviet scientists and technologies captured by the United States following WWII—a moment marking what many consider the birth of the US-Russia space race. These were also the seeds of a new technobotanical frontier. Mustard seeds accompanied Edward White during his spacewalk with the Gemini IV mission in 1965—a nationalistic project intended to demonstrate American dominance over the Soviet Union, and a race to land the first man on the moon. The mustard seed accompanied White’s spacewalk and NASA’s mission as a seed known to symbolize the capacity of small things to grow into projects of greater significance.
Though mustard seeds were returned to Earth as small mementos of this maiden journey, other seed varieties received greater notoriety upon their return from space. Rutgers California Supreme tomato seeds (Solanum lycopersicum) were deployed on a satellite launched into low-Earth orbit with NASA’s Long Duration Exposure Facility (LDEF) in 1984 to test the effects of cosmic radiation levels on seeds later grown by school children in the United States. The Solanum family was selected for its namesake and Latin word for sun (sol), and the species’ fondness of direct exposure to sunlight. The morphological character of their flowers resembles the sun and radiating rays of light. However, their exposure to solar radiation caused some controversy. Reports of ‘killer tomatoes’ with radical and dangerous mutations accompanied their dispersal among hundreds of schools in the early 1990s participating in NASA’s Space Exposed Experiment Developed for Students (SEEDS) program. These concerns were soon dispelled, as students grew radiated seeds into harmless tomatoes throughout American school gardens, alongside non-mutant tomatoes grown from common seed. Seeds from this program sent to Italy and Australia passed through biosecurity protocols only after being exposed to gamma rays. NASA reported no significant changes to the radiated seeds and fruit following their orbital endeavors, but did note the disappointment of students failing to grow ‘mutant plants and fruit’. Seeds exposed to solar radiation did mutate into seeds of knowledge, exposing education systems and body politics to the ostensibly sunny disposition of national space programs.
Seeds from space are continually cultivated as new mutations and stories we tell ourselves to naturalize and nationalize space exploration. They also reflect the not-so-subtle winks and puns common among astrobotanists, astrobiologists and other disciplines sending plants and seeds into space. These sensibilities are evidenced by the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Principia space programme, referencing Newton’s experiments with the laws of gravity, and its payload of arugula (Eruca sativa) seeds sent to space and also grown by its school systems. Arugula is of course a playful nod to the common term used throughout the UK and former crown colonies referring to the edible leafy plant as ‘rocket’. The EU and UK describe this project and others including its Lunar Gateway and Moonlight Initiatives as the future of lunar landings and a constellation of satellites to provide communication and navigation for experiments on Mars. That the EU and many imperial and colonial powers old and new are planning to build colonies on the Moon is an unsurprising and jocular tongue-in-cheek extension of space as their newest frontier. These are the old seeds of colonial frontierism bearing strange new fruit. Principia seeds will join grape seeds also aboard the ISS, exposed to radiation and subject to genetic mutations, and grown to produce space wine as part of a joint Texas A&M and Aegis Aerospace research project (TAMU-SPIRIT).
Living plants were increasingly enlisted as experimental test subjects during missions dedicated to scientific experimentation with botanical life in space, and as diplomatic emissaries during the botanical space race spanning decades between the Soviet Union and United States. Plants were shuttled into orbit to test the effects of solar radiation, microgravity, cellular and genetic mutations, extremely cold temperatures, and the impossibly harsh conditions of space. These experiments began during the Cold War—a coldness exceeded by temperatures in space reaching 2.7 Kelvin (-455°F or -270°C) produced by near-vacuum conditions lacking the necessary particles to hold heat. These extreme conditions were stabilized within the pressurized and climate-controlled interiors of space stations and satellites, alongside the simultaneous de-thawing of Cold War tensions made infamous by the “handshake in space” between Russian cosmonauts and NASA astronauts in 1975. Plants served as diplomatic intermediaries thereafter.
The technobotanical space race emerged as a diplomatic mechanism through which international collaboration ensued. Orchid plants were the first living botanical astronauts joining Russian cosmonauts and the Oasis 1 plant growth system aboard the Salyut 6 space station in 1980. The Thale Cress (Arabidopsis thaliana) was the first plant to successfully flower in space aboard the Soviet Salyut 7 space station in 1982. These efforts fostered new cooperation between countries borrowing Russian systems to grow space plants, transforming the payloads of rockets from nuclear warheads into seeds of peace. Pansy seeds (Viola × wittrockiana) accompanied the United Kingdom’s mission in orbit for six months on the Russian Space Station Mir in 1991. This specific variety of pansy was developed by crossbreeding European and Russian species to make larger and more vibrant blooms—a hybrid reflecting cooperative efforts. In 1997, NASA successfully germinated and harvested a crop of Wisconsin Fast Plants (Brassica rapa) seeds grown on the same Russian space station.
Technobotanical diplomacy continued thereafter. The International Space Station (ISS) emerged as an embodiment of Cold War tensions, and a greenhouse in the cosmos constructed through political and botanical machinations (Buchli 2021; Lambright 1994). Built in 2011 as a scientific laboratory in orbit and a beacon of space-age cosmopolitanism, the ISS was effectively a Russian station and American station fused together (with European and Japanese modules on the US side). Although Reagan’s call to ‘tear down that wall’ anticipated the fall of the Berlin Wall, the ISS was divided in Cold War terms, yet engaged in similar technobotanical pursuits. On each divided side, the space race included botanical experiments as a new modality of international diplomacy exceeding the terrestrial and territorial skirmishes of decades prior. Seeds and plants grown on either side of the ISS were subject to different cosmopolitical contexts, though growing in similar systems and conditions.
Matching the approach of previous Russian advancements, the United States developed the Advanced Astroculture (ADVASC) Experiment to grow soybeans (Glycine max) on the ISS, guiding programs that continually select and modify plants anticipated for space exploration and terraforming new planets. Staple and commodity crops including wheat and corn are integral to these missions. Cinnamon basil (ocimum basilicum) seeds were affixed to the exterior of the International Space Station (ISS) for twenty years as part of the Materials International Space Station Experiment (MISSE), returned to Earth and planted in 2007. Although the olfactory bouquet of space described on the ISS is reminiscent of gunpowder and metallic fumes, the experiments with tomato and basil seeds led astronauts to ask: ‘Why does our space station smell like lasagne?’.
Trees are particularly central to the botanical space race. The Soviet Salyut 6 space station launched in 1977 carried a Kalanchoe tree (Kalanchoe beharensis) in its orbit, a species native to Madagascar known locally as the ‘mother of thousands’. NASA astronauts on the Apollo 10 mission of 1969 brought white birch tree seeds (Betula papyrifera) and Newton apple tree seeds as a nod to Newtonian physics, and an image taken from Isaac Newton's Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica encoded on the Golden Voyager Record. These seeds and trees emerged as particularly iconic to American and international space exploration efforts with the growth of Moon Trees. The Apollo 14 mission carried hundreds of seeds from redwood, sycamore, pine, sweet gum, and fir trees during thirty-four orbits around the moon in 1971. These were planted in 1975-1976 by state forestry organizations in 40 different states upon their return to Earth and known thereafter as Moon Trees. A loblolly pine (Pinus taeda) was planted at the White House, with others given ceremoniously that included a sycamore tree (Platanus occidentalis) to France, a sweetgum tree (Liquidambar styraciflua) and redwood trees (Sequoia sempervirens) given to Brazil and the Emperor of Japan. Although these seeds survived extreme radiation, temperatures, atmospheric and gravitational forces in space, most failed to survive beyond germination and early growth in non-native ecologies on Earth. The Moon Trees that survived now grow in proximity to their native habitats. These trees anticipated NASA’s Orion spacecraft that ferried thousands of seeds into lunar orbit, and the Artemis I and II missions including seeds of the Canadian lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta) and red maple (Acer rubrum). These seeds will be sent into planetary orbit and returned to inform national STEM initiatives sponsored by NASA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). Moon trees currently join the bodies of fallen trees processed into paper used for educational workbooks and Moon Tree Coloring Books.
In the world of space exploration, planting a tree is akin to planting a flag. Among many nations seeking to sink their roots into the Moon and Mars, Australia sent Wollemi pine (Wollemia nobilis) and Waratah (Telopea speciosissima) seeds to the ISS in 2008. The Waratah’s latin namesake means ‘seen from afar’, and is joined by Golden Wattle (Acacia pycnantha) seeds as Australia’s national flower. These trees are integral to Aboriginal cultures and ecologies throughout millennia, known to survive in harsh and arid conditions with extreme solar exposure, with seeds lasting for centuries in these conditions. In space, they survived 2800 orbits around Earth exposed to radiation and microgravity, and are newly prized by the Australian Space Agency’s (ASA) Australian Lunar Experiment Promoting Horticulture (ALEPH) for their capacity to facilitate its mission of colonizing the Moon and Mars. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) also launched a Palm in Space project, sending palm seeds to the International Space Station (ISS) for germination tests anticipating their unique ability to withstand similarly harsh Martian conditions. Their plans to establish the Mars Science City designed by Danish architect Bjarke Ingels for the UAE will replicate these surface conditions for a similarly palm-laden colony on Mars.
Palm trees are not always indicative of paradise. Currently, the mission and vision to plant trees and other plants on Moon and Mars remains largely within the domains of experimental science and speculative science fiction. The limitations of terraforming these frontiers are several: solar and ionic radiation, extreme temperatures, zero-and micro-gravity, vacuums and atmospheric compositions, a lack of water, the absence of living beings that form the foundations for complex biological life, and other impossibly harsh conditions of space. One could not design more inhospitable conditions for life—quite the opposite of a royal welcome orchestrated by the Pura Paku Alaman Palace Orchestra and composed by K.R.T. Wasitodipuro in the lush and fertile lands of Java.
A dirty secret underlies the botanic space race, and the remote possibilities of terraforming the Moon and Mars using plants: soil. Increasingly the subject of Science and Technology Studies (STS) among those considering soil (Laurent et al 2025), Puig de la Bellacas’s notions of ‘technoscientific futurity’ (2019, 2015) acknowledges soil depletion on Earth and similar conditions expected on other planets following the exhaustion of life’s vital substrate. The problem is not that the Moon and Mars do not have soil, it is the nature of their soils referred to as regolith. Regolith is a biologically sterile aggregate of rocks, pebbles, sediments and fine dust forming the lifeless crust of extraterrestrial planets. Plants ‘farm’ soil, alongside microbial and mycorrhizal life that decompose plants and other materials into new soil. Planets without plants do not have fertile soil, Mars and the Moon offer no common ground with Earth.
Another problem with Martian and lunar soil is that we know very little about the regolith that forms their surface. Between 1969-1972, the Apollo missions extracted 382 kilograms of Moon regolith and core samples alongside a smaller fraction of samples retrieved from Soviet missions during this period. Humans have not placed a moon-booted foot on the Moon since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972, marking the end of the Cold War space race. In the absence of sufficient samples available for study, ‘soil simulants’ inform the bedrock of scientific experimentation. In 2013, exobiologist Wieger Wamelink at the University of Wageningen in the Netherlands began experimenting with extraterrestrial soil simulants estimated to share similar properties. These were extracted from volcanic areas in Hawaii and soils in Arizona roughly approximating the Moon and Mars. These stimulants built upon Mars-like simulants (SC-1a) and Moondust simulants (JSC1-1a) synthesized at NASA's Johnson Space Center beginning in 1998, informing the Mojave Mars Simulant (MMS) developed in 2007 and the Mars Global Simulant (MGS-1) developed in 2018. Like their cosmic counterparts, simulated regoliths lack the requisite mineral and nutritional requirements for plant growth, and often contain levels of heavy metals deleterious to plants. Advanced Plant Habitat (APH) systems use porous clay substrates controlling the release of water, nutrients and oxygen to plant roots in growth chambers. 3-D printed moon soil is currently in production (Taylor et al. 2018). Several new stimulants are currently in production and use—extraterrestrial soils that continually exclude plants as beings that have been producing fertile soils for many billions of years. Today’s space race moves at a pace beyond the evolutionary timescales of plants and their worlds of soil.
The botanical space race is currently advancing in new directions. Space stations often bypass soil by using hydroponic and aeroponic systems awash with synthetic nutrients. These include Chongqing University’s Chang’e-4 mission as the first to successfully sprout living plants on the dark side of the Moon in 2019. The mission germinated cotton, potato and the ubiquitous Thale Cress seeds in a mini-biosphere with fruit fly eggs and yeast, enclosed and protected from lunar conditions. Other scientists from China are currently experimenting with diatoms (photosynthetic algae) to transform infertile regolith into fertile soil for lunar solar farming (Liu & Zhang 2025), anticipating the possibilities of extraterrestrial photosynthesis (Chen et al. 2022; Yao et al. 2022; Yang et al. 2021).
Texas-based Starbase Brewing is currently partnering with Texas A&M, Jaguar Space, and NASAs Optimizing Agriculture in Simulated Interplanetary Soils (OASIS) program to brew space beer. Its first payload seeks to grow crops including space hops using Martian regolith simulant, heralded as the future of agricultural colonies on Mars. Their goal is to develop new soil simulants, microgravity fermentation techniques, and ingredients sourced from future Martian agricultural systems. However, research with Modoc potatoes (Solanum tuberosum) grown in lunar regolith simulants continually produce dismal results (Caporale et al. 2024, 2023). Plant roots generally fail to develop, and plant growth is severely stunted in conditions simulating lunar and Martian contexts (Handy et al. 2026). To reconcile this problem, NASA is currently planning to retrieve the first samples of Martian dirt for study with the Artemis II mission, although samples, tests, results, and applications drawn from these efforts are decades away. These endeavors mark the barren prospects and ‘kinds of soils’ currently stunting the growth of the technobotanical space race.
The Rite of Spring: Sacrificial Dance
The fourth song on the second disc of the Golden Voyager Record is “The Rite of Spring (Le Sacre du Printemps)” composed by Igor Stravinsky and performed by the Columbia Symphony Orchestra. Those familiar with the piece recall its raucous reception when first performed at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris on May 29, 1913. Dramatically departing from classical tradition at the time, The Rite of Spring introduced Parisian audiences to strange ostinatos and the resulting dislocation of meter, with irregularly shifting downbeats that continually override metric regularity. The cacophony was reportedly so foreign to Parisian ears that audible hissing, physical altercations, and a mass exodus from the concert hall ensued. Though common among song structures in traditional Russian folk music, these sounds were reportedly so foreign to the French auditory cortex and neural systems that they triggered emotional, psychological and physical distress. Sonic dissonance produced social discord. Later celebrated as the ‘birth certificate’ of modern classical music, Stravinsky’s ballet and orchestral work told the story of pagan Slavic rituals wherein ancient tribes celebrated the advent of spring through human sacrifice—and a dance to the death to ensure good harvest for the season.
The introduction of plants to the foreign environs of space would produce a similar cacophony of distress. The Earth functions as a protective greenhouse for plants and their capacity to orchestrate complex biological life, using the atmosphere to capture an admixture of gases, control temperatures, and filter harmful radiation from the sun. Introduced to space, plants would immediately suffer cell damage when encountering dramatic changes in atmospheric pressure in vacuum conditions, suffocate in the absence of carbon dioxide and oxygen exchange integral to photosynthesis, and either freeze or burn depending on their exposure to direct sunlight or absence thereof. Lacking protection from Earth's atmosphere and magnetic field, plant tissues and genetics would be severely damaged by ultraviolet radiation and high-energy cosmic rays. Greenhouses on satellites and space stations are constructed to mitigate the harsh conditions of space and minimally simulate growing conditions on Earth. Lacking normal gravitational forces, however, roots fail to grow downward and stems fail to grow upward. Plants rely on gravitropism to discern the difference between up and down. Gravity is also necessary for plants to sense, absorb and circulate moisture. Plant stems and leaves also struggle to grow toward light in space, which lacks the familiar cycles, trajectories and wavelengths of the sun that powered their growth on Earth for billions of years. They use phototropism to orient themselves in space, but struggle to do so in outer space. There are no seasons in space.
Plants survive space travel in greenhouses on space stations and satellites, within climate controlled conditions using artificial lighting, hydroponic and aeroponic systems designed to force feed water to plant roots, synthesized nutrients, and carbon dioxide produced by their human counterparts. Satellites in low-Earth orbit include CubeSats—box-shaped satellites using hundreds of automated sensors and cameras to monitor how shifts in humidity, lighting, and air composition affect seedling growth in microgravity and solar radiation. These systems of technobotanical sensing tell us about these conditions, and the sensibilities of those designing the systems (Sprenger 2026; Sareen & Kakehi 2023). More than 25 plant cultivation systems designed for space have been deployed during the past fifty years—experimental rites of cosmic spring anticipating the new botanical space race (Zabel et al. 2016). The first Soviet plant cultivation experiments on the Oasis 1 launched in 1971, growing flax, leek, onion and Chinese cabbage under fluorescent lights. It preceded the Vazon, Phyton, Malachite, and Svetoblok plant growth systems aboard the Salyut and Soyuz spacecrafts, and the Mir station to follow.
Multiple systems and programs were launched thereafter. The Advanced Astroculture (ADVASC) experiment was the first American plant growth system on the ISS, adapted from prior Astroculture systems. Lada was the first greenhouse built within the ISS, developed jointly by the Institute of Biomedical Problems (IMBP) in Moscow and Utah State University’s Space Dynamics Laboratory, building upon the Svet greenhouse on Mir. NASA’s VEGGIE program launched in 2014 shifted attention from plant experimentation to food production under microgravity, growing Chinese cabbage and red Russian kale (a cosmopolitical nod to current powers in space). Lada-2 was developed and launched in 2016, intended to support ongoing plant research, but suffered a launch failure and the destruction of its spacecraft. The privately-owned Redwire Greenhouse grows plants from seed to maturity in space, managing NASA’s Advanced Plant Habitat on the ISS. The EU’s participation in the space race now includes the Thales Alenia Space Station (named after the Thale Cress plant) designed to monitor and modify plants and photosynthesis in space. The EDEN ISS greenhouse project managed by the European Union and NASA is also conducting joint experiments with vegetable cultivation to colonize the Moon and Mars. For those interested, the ESA offers a Space Greenhouse Kit available for educational purposes on Earth.
Plants are increasingly essential to longer space missions, relied upon to remove carbon dioxide from air, produce oxygen, recycle water, provide fresh food, and reportedly increase the psychological wellbeing of astronauts afforded glimpses of botanical life within the otherwise lifeless environs of enclosed space travel and the vast expanse beyond. Like plants, human bodies also suffer in space, losing muscle mass and bone density, experiencing cardiovascular and circulatory issues, and suffering long-term complications from exposure to radiation including cataracts, cancer risks, and damage to cognitive and immune system functions. During large solar flares and increased radiation, astronauts seek shelter in shielded compartments of space stations. Like their plant counterparts, humans also experience disorientation and physiological discord in space. Maria Piltz, the dancer who played the sacrificial victim in Stravinsky’s ‘Rite of Spring’ was standing still and quiet while the balletic performance of spring rituals unfurled in her orbit. She blossomed into a flourishing performance of angular contortions and tortured motions before swaying and collapsing during the finale of the orchestral piece. Stravinsky described the Rite of Spring as “the annual cycle of forces which are born, and which fall again.”
Dark was the Night, Cold was the Ground
The Golden Voyager Records are currently careening through the silent void of space. Voyager 1 and 2 are estimated to lose power as energy sources dwindle and systems inevitably shut down. Carl Sagan reportedly wanted the records to include the 1969 Beatles song "Here Comes the Sun", but the company holding its copyrights declined. Blind Willie Johnson’s ‘Dark was the Night, Cold was the Ground" appears instead on the record—a song featuring the resonant swaying and lilting sounds of Johnson’s bottle-neck slide guitar. It was written to convey the sorrow, anguish, and death throes of Christ the night before his Crucifixion upon the dead corpus of tree trunks assembled into a cross. The song has no lyrics, but does include Johnson’s humming, soft cries and moaning. Blind Willie Johnson’s voice and guitar were engraved on the Golden Voyager Record, but cannot be heard in the vacuum of space that carries no sound waves. It travels through the dark and silent night of the cosmos.
Despite the vast and soundless expanse of space as a hostile environment for plants and living beings, it affords certain advantages to new technologies designed to conduct artificial photosynthesis—systems that mimic plant-based photosynthesis by performing the basic principles of ‘water splitting’. Plants evolved to use solar energy as a means to split water molecules (H2O) into hydrogen (H) and oxygen (O). Hydrogen is a readily available source of energy for space travel, and oxygen is enjoyed by humans traveling in space. Designers of technologies including the ‘artificial leaf’ have been making devices capable of performing this radically simplified version of photosynthesis since the first prototype developed by Kenichi Honda and Akira Fujishima in 1972. Their Honda-Fujishima effect proved artificial photosynthesis as suitable for solar-to-chemical fuel conversion—a watershed moment followed by a global race to produce technologies capable of performing similar feats.
Today, technologies capable of performing artificial photosynthesis are championed as the key to space travel and exploration. Many expect these technologies to outperform their living counterparts. Plants on Earth receive sunlight altered by the atmosphere, changed through diffraction (the bending of light around edges) and scattering (when light bounces off air particles). This shapes how plants synthesize light into energy capable of powering all planetary life. However, plants do not absorb and convert the full spectrum of light into chemical energy, converting ~1-3 percent of solar energy into chemical energy (Zhu et al. 2008, 2010; Blankenship et al. 2011). Technologies designed for artificial photosynthesis can survive the harsh conditions of space while adsorbing the full spectrum of sunlight, radiating unimpeded by the atmosphere and providing an abundant source of renewable energy for space travel and the colonization of the Moon and Mars. Using frozen ice beneath lunar and Martian surfaces and exposed to this new sun, technologies designed for artificial photosynthesis anticipate a technobotanical world in the absence of plant life.
The origins of artificial photosynthesis were similarly received as speculative science fiction. Although the Italian Space Agency (ASI) was the first country after the US and Russia to launch its own satellite (the San Marco 1) and currently works alongside NASA and the ISS in plans for lunar exploration, the concept of artificial photosynthesis was first envisioned by Italian chemist Giacomo Luigi Ciamician in 1912. Ciamician was a photophysicist that imagined the future of photosynthetic societies encased in glass vessels like technoutopian greenhouses. The seed of his idea was translated anew with the advent of astrobotany during the mid-1900s by Soviet astronomer Gavriil Tikhov in 1945. Astrobotanists first defined their field as the science of studying vegetation on celestial bodies. Tikhov imagined astrobotany as a means to detect extraterrestrial life on other planets by measuring their light spectrum signatures, inspired by plants growing in the dark and cold subarctic environments of the Pamir Mountains as analogous to the harsh conditions of Mars. He experimented with different light wavelengths including infrared (IR) spectrums adsorbed by coniferous trees including the polar juniper (Juniperus sibirica) known for its capacity to survive in freezing and nutrient deficient conditions. In otherwise inhospitable conditions, sufficient light bent toward certain wavelengths were presumed sufficient for life on other planets. Despite the apparent differences between Earth and Mars, Tikhov considered planets orbiting around a shared sun, with life organized by the same elemental materials accreting throughout planets in our solar system. These ideas have since provided a guiding light for experiments with artificial photosynthesis in space stations, the Moon and Mars.
Today, research with artificial photosynthesis bends light toward the purpose of harnessing sunlight to power new colonies on the Moon and Mars. Technologies capable of performing artificial photosynthesis are growing into new forests in space capable of absorbing ultraviolet (UV) rays generally presumed deleterious to living plant tissues, and wavelengths beyond the visible light spectrum including the electromagnetic spectrum. Artificial photosynthesis is unconstrained by the limitations of plant-based photosynthesis and limited light on Earth. Researchers are working to develop photoelectrochemical (PEC) device performances to conduct solar-driven lunar water-splitting and Martian carbon dioxide reduction (CO2R) functions using the Martian solar irradiance spectrum for in situ resource utilization on Mars and the Moon (Ross et al. 2023). Following a working group on artificial photosynthesis formed in 2025, Japan’s Minister of the Environment Keiichiro Asao described the future of a new Apollo Program to develop thin-film photovoltaics and energy-saving semiconductors used in devices using solar energy to capture carbon dioxide and produce renewable energy. China’s Chang’e-4 mission is increasingly testing the possibilities of artificial photosynthesis to power its space stations and lunar bases. Research conducted by the ESA suggests promising solar radiation conditions on the Moon to conduct artificial photosynthesis, The UK Space Agency plans on installing science stations on the dark side of the Moon—space laboratories using astronomical instruments operating throughout the electromagnetic spectrum and galactic cosmic rays. Its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) mission, Lucy Night, was designed to explore the Universe’s early ‘dark ages’ before the first stars formed. The ESA’s Moonlight program also aims to build lunar bases using artificial photosynthesis.
Photosynthetic power now fuels the new space race among countries including China, the United States, the European Union, and more (Yruela 2024; Ross et al. 2023; Cao 2022). Although the United States had boots on the ground (or at least the infamous imprints thereof) since the Apollo I mission, China has spent the past few decades developing lunar exploration programs anticipating a scientific research station on the Moon. China's Tiangong space station (translated as ‘heavenly palace’ in Chinese) has been circulating in low-Earth orbit since 2022. There are three goals guiding the China Manned Space (CMS) mission and the China Manned Spaceflight Agency (CMSA) established in 1992. The first goal is to launch manned spacecrafts to conduct scientific experiments, the second is to develop technologies to equip spacecrafts and labs for further exploration, and the third goal is to establish a long-term space station. China’s Shenzhou-23 spacecraft was launched in May 2026 to meet the Tiangong space station, with these mission objectives at the fore. NASA has stated its aims to return people to the Moon’s by 2028, and China has plans to send its first astronauts to the lunar surface by 2030.
Artificial photosynthesis is also designed to address a problem previously noted as central to space travel and colonization of extraterrestrial planets: the problem of energy (Zabel et al. 2016). Artificial photosynthesis is expected to power the new space race. It is integral to China’s aims and recently proven to produce rocket fuel and oxygen on the Tiangong space station, and projected to power China’s proposed moon base scheduled for completion within the decade. Like the American flag planted on the moon, the Chinese state television channel CCTV planted its flag in the future of artificial photosynthesis, broadcasting, “This technology mimics the natural photosynthesis process of green plants through engineered physical and chemical methods, utilizing carbon dioxide resources in confined spaces or extraterrestrial atmospheres to produce oxygen and carbon-based fuels”. This new photosynthetic power will be used to power China’s base of operations and 14 sites near the Moon’s equator and surrounding the base of an ancient volcanic region called Rimae Bode (Yang et al. 2026). China also plans to build a permanent Moon base in partnership with Russia, the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS).
Moon bases constructed by China, Russia, the United States and partners in the European Union will be located near the Moon’s south pole, where its 1.5° axis tilts to provide nearly continual sunshine above the horizon, alongside craters where ice is estimated in abundance. These are the primary ingredients required for artificial photosynthesis, where sunlight can power technobotanical devices that transform hydrogen and oxygen into rocket fuel. Here, lunar bases gathering solar power anticipate the future of cosmopolitical power on Earth.
The United States and NASA are currently responding in kind with similar plans to establish a lunar base on the Moon’s south pole. Nasa's Ignition Moon Base and others constructed by private-sector companies will be positioned within the harsh and desolate terrain of the Moon’s south pole, illuminated by light angles “casting dramatic shadows’ that will subject solar power systems to prolonged periods of extreme cold and dark. The shadows cast by the Cold War are among those marking the features of this terrain. NASA's Artemis II mission launched in 2026 marked America’s goal of establishing a lunar base in response to China’s recent advancements. The NASA Authorization Act of 2026 provided increased funding and strategic direction, acknowledging the “intensifying space race with the People’s Republic of China” described by the United States Senate Committee on Commerce Science and Transportation. Although NASA remains underfunded in favor of privatized space industries, substantial investments and subsidies are channeled to SpaceX, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab and other private-sector actors assisting in the launch of ~200 rockets into space annually. Representatives from NASA stated the agency’s objectives clearly in May 2026 by proclaiming that the United States will “never give up the Moon again,” and elucidated plans to carry out scientific experiments and mine valuable resources on the Moon and Mars. Artificial photosynthesis will power the new frontier of rare metals and minerals extraction in space.
This space race is further facilitated by private-sector actors including SpaceX, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, and private spaceports constructed throughout the world (Tutton et al. 2024). Their rocket payloads include ~18,000 active satellites currently orbiting Earth, more seeds and plants, and technologies capable of performing artificial photosynthesis to power space travel and exploration. Newly constructed and privatized space stations including the Blue Origin’s Orbital Reef, Starlab, and Axiom Station anticipate the decommissioning of the International Space Station (ISS) in 2030. These are outposts planned for lunar and Martian expeditions, fueled by artificial photosynthesis and in pursuit of yet another source of power: critical minerals and metals mined in space (Anand et al., 2025; Keszthelyi et al. 2025; Hedrick 2023; McLeod et al. 2017). Rare earth metals and minerals extraction is the ‘rare earth frontier’ driving the new space race (Klinger 2017). The technobotanical space race and the colonization of the Moon and Mars is a ‘prospective’ imaginary in both senses of the term, connecting extractivism with futurity. The goal is not to merely cultivate or simulate lunar and Martian regolith, but to extract the metals and minerals beneath the lunar and Martian surfaces. Photosynthetic power translates the familiar logics of colonial extraction from a rare metals and minerals frontier.
Who owns Mars and the Moon? The Outer Space Treaty formally prohibits any nation from establishing military bases on the Moon or other planets in the solar system, though vastly inadequate as a regulatory mechanism. The recent Artemis Accords led by NASA recently finalized a non-binding agreement establishing the basis for shared access to the Moon signed by over 60 nations. While the Treaty and new Accords prohibit territorial claims and military bases, they do allow the installation of scientific research stations on a permanent basis. More importantly, they also provide specific allowances for resource extraction and ‘safety zones’ surrounding research stations and areas of scientific exploration. Research conducted without oversight on the dark side of the moon anticipates a zone particularly lacking in operational oversight despite treaties and accords. Safety zones established around stations and operations would effectively allow nations to claim vast expanses of the Moon, and other planets to follow. These follow the path of the Golden Voyager records manufactured using rare Earth minerals—copper discs plated in nickel and gold, with record covers made of aluminum and electroplated with uranium-238. Their songs are etched into a telling materiality of cold grounds exposed to new light.
Barnumbirr (Morning Star)
I want to conclude this article by thinking through the song ‘Banumbirr’ composed by Aboriginal Australians Tom Djäwa, Mudpo, and Waliparu. The knowledge shared within this song is included on the version etched into the Golden Voyager Records, sent to share the life and teachings of Banumbirr. Astronomy and the science of stars are integral to Aboriginal knowledge systems predating Western science by millennia (Forster 2021; Norris 2016). Banumbirr is a creator-spirit known to the Yolngu peoples in northern Arnhem Land, also known as the planet Venus—the Morning Star. It is known that Barnumbirr guided sisters navigating a river to Arnhem Land by canoe, then flying across the continent by creating a ‘songline’ that created all lands, plants and animals. It is a song like many songlines central to Aboriginal peoples—a cultural, spiritual, and scientific tool for navigating life in its many dimensions. The Morning Star rituals proceed from dawn to dusk and are performed on each night of Venus’ synodic (orbital) period when the planet is most visible in the sky. Venus is the third brightest object in the sky after the sun and Moon, and shines upon ceremonies allowing Yolngu peoples to release the spirits of the dead and communicate with ancestors throughout dimensions.
Songlines are integral to Aboriginal peoples as maps of the land used for navigation and connection with sacred sites, and are also known as mirrors that connect societies to space. Artificial photosynthesis in space is also reliant upon mirrors that reflect sunlight toward space stations, lunar bases, and societies on Earth. The private-sector firm Reflect Orbital plans to launch thousands of satellites featuring massive reflective panels and ‘space mirrors’ into low-Earth orbit to redirect the sunlight toward Earth during periods of night. This new light might be used to enhance or extend light cycles for agricultural production, alongside a range of purposes for beams of light shown upon targeted areas of the planet up to 5km wide. The idea was first envisioned to weaponize solar energy through a ‘space-mirror’ and solar death-ray theorized by Germany during WWII (Fanning 2010), enacted in 1993 by Russian satellite Znamya 2 with a mirror 24 meters wide intended to extend daylight in Siberia. Several prototypes of space mirrors are currently in development, with many estimated to reflect luminosity equivalent to the full moon. These are intended to project light and solar power where needed, although ecologists caution against artificial light that might interrupt the life cycles, circadian rhythms and navigational capacities of animals and insects that rely upon the sun and stars for navigation. Solar mirrors might one day be used to reflect and concentrate light continuously during a lunar or Martian day roughly corresponding with the light and dark cycles of Earth (Yruela 2024), Here, imagined colonies might take shelter within cosmic greenhouses powered by artificial photosynthesis, desperately seeking to recreate the conditions for thriving life generated by plant-based ecologies on Earth.
Among many lessons included in the story of ‘Banumbirr’, it is a song of reflection about creations and connections. Research now suggests that contemporary navigation systems in Australia follow the path of Indigenous songlines, as many colonial routes throughout the world often do (Fuller 2016; Norris & Harney 2014). Space colonies reflect something similar. The song also speaks to the ways in which human societies seek to understand themselves and their place in a world invariably connected to plant worlds and extraplanetary worlds. The Morning Star provides guidance through the darkness of night, alongside celestial bodies reflecting the light of our sun and others beyond. Addressing the 2025 World Governments Summit held in the United Arab Emirates, CEO of Reflect Orbital Ben Nowack claimed, “This is the first time that humanity is gaining control over the sun.” In this way, the space race intends to harness the photosynthetic power that plants have evolved over billions of years—the power to transform solar power into technobotanical power.
The space race is cosmopolitics by technobotanical means—a mirror that reflects the mutating nature of our relationships with plants, photosynthesis, and power. Like the Golden Voyager Records intended to communicate with extraterrestrial species from other planets, the space race suggests a growing alienation of energy-intensive societies reliant upon plant-based technologies to find their place in the cosmos. Artificial photosynthesis is estranged from the plants and photosynthesis that powered life on Earth for billions of years, reflecting the retreat and ‘collective industrially triggered anosmia’ of urbanized and technologically driven societies currently lost in space (Hendlin 2020). The ‘Sounds of Earth’ introducing the Golden Voyager Records is more than a prescient soundtrack, it is a story of uprootedness. Although championed as the future of terraforming celestial bodies by converting the light of the sun into renewable fuel, the space race is a cosmic imaginary of elsewhere. It is a technobotanical frontier of extractivism organized to bring rare minerals and resources back to Earth, marking the gravitational limitations of cosmic escape.
Today, Golden Voyager Records float silently in the void within Spaceshuttles Voyager 1 and 2, currently hurdling an estimated 24 billion kilometers away from Earth in the Kuiper Belt. They are the most distant objects in space, designed using materials selected for their durability with an anticipated lifespan of one billion years (insert Sagan’s iconic ‘billions and billions’ here). As power sources within these Voyagers inevitably fail, artificial photosynthesis will increasingly power greenhouses in satellites, space stations, lunar outposts, Martian bases, and imaginaries thereof. The first space mirrors launched at the time of this publication will shine their light back upon plants and energy-intensive societies beneath a new sun.
The new space race is a technobotanical frontier, extending the ongoing importance of plants and photosynthetic systems to space programs and scientific experiments in orbit. These botanical emissaries translate the possibilities of photosynthetic power in space, and the cosmopolitics of energy-intensive societies on Earth. Plants and photosynthetic systems sent into orbit are akin to the gleaming Golden Voyager Records launched decades prior: they reflect the logics and aspirations of societies seeking to exceed planetary limitations. The technobotanical space race is a mirror. While engaging new forms of light and regolith intended for plant growth and human colonies on Mars and the Moon, these are colonial projects like many others. They are designed to territorialize yet another frontier and return extractable resources to their planetary metropoles. However, rare metals and minerals are merely another regolith where technobotany takes root. Societies reliant upon photosynthetic technologies anticipate new mutations, and new ways of thinking power through plants. Technobotany sheds light on these mutations, a conceptual framework for Science and Technology Studies, History of Science (HOS) and a range of disciplines to critically examine the entanglements between botany, technology and society.
Author Bio:
Aaron Gregory Ph.D. is a scholar of Science & Technology Studies (STS) and History of Science (HOS) working at the nexus of ecology, technology and society with the Department of Society, Environment, and Health Equity (SEHE) at UC Riverside. He is affiliated with the Center for Science, Technology, Medicine & Society (CSTMS) at University of California, Berkeley where he received his doctorate, and is often found tending his small garden or running feral in alpine habitats.
