News
Space Agriculture Group Planning Meeting – Septemebr 14-15 2026
The Space Agriculture Group will hold a planning meeting focused on the BALSA project and Low Earth Orbit (LEO) experiments.
Date: September 14-15 2026
Venue: Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Informatics, Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia
About the Initiative
The Space Agriculture Initiative is dedicated to researching, developing, and promoting technologies that enable plant cultivation in extreme environments — from outer space to the most challenging places on Earth.
Our vision is to contribute to a future where sustainable food production is possible anywhere, supporting both Earth-based agriculture and long-term human presence in space.
Key focus areas:
- Technologies for growing plants in space and on other planets
- Bringing space-driven innovations back to Earth
- Connecting scientists, students, technical partners, and the public
- Science communication and environmental education
Why Space Agriculture?
- Growing global population requires new approaches to food security
- Climate change threatens traditional agricultural methods
- Upcoming space missions (Moon base, Mars exploration) require closed ecological systems
- Innovations for extreme environments inspire solutions for deserts, dry regions, saline soils, and limited resources
- Inspiring the next generation toward science, technology, and sustainability
Main objectives:
- Test and evaluate plant-growth methods under simulated extraterrestrial conditions
- Develop small research modules (“bio-habitats”)
- Support student teams and competitions (ESA/NASA challenges)
- Organize workshops, outreach events, and public demonstrations
- Build collaborations with local and international partners
Planned Activities
2025
- Initiative created: https://dep.fmph.uniba.sk/space-agriculture-2025-bratislava/
- First partners & project definition
- Initial experiments: Plasma treatment application on seeds for extreme conditions
2026
- Starting Seeds for Low Earth Orbit (LEO) program
- Balloon Experiments, Latin American stratosphere facility
- Experiments using lunar/Mars soil simulants
- Controlled-environment plant experiments
2027
- Oasis Beta LEO flight of seeds
- …
Partners
Academic:
- Department of Experimental Physics, Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Informatics, Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia
- Departments of Genetics and Plant Physiology, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia
- School of Physics and Astronomy and School of Biosciences, University of Kent, United Kingdom
- HUN-REN Institute for Nuclear Research, Debrecen, Hungary
- Department of Surface Engineering, Jožef Stefan Institute, Ljubljana, Slovenia
- Centre for Nonequilibrium Processes, Institute of Physics, Belgrade, Serbia
- Department of Biochemistry, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas, Lithuania
- Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Lublin University of Technology, Poland
- CEITEC – Central European Institute of Technology, Brno University of Technology, Brno, Czech Republic
- Aryabhatta Centre for Advanced Studies in Space Science and Technology, Adamas University, Barasat, Kolkata, India
Technological
- Tumbleweed https://www.teamtumbleweed.eu/
- Project Stratosphere https://proyectoestratosfera.com/
Sponsors and funding bodies
News & Updates
Contact
- Contact email: veronika.medvecka(at)uniba.sk
- Contact for new partners or collaborators: veronika.medvecka(at)uniba.sk, n.j.mason(at)kent.ac.uk