Artemis Gardens

Faculty Advisor: Kathryn Wingate

Industry Mentor: Vanter 

Summary: We’re going back to the Moon to stay, but long-term missions require a reliable source of fresh food to sustain our astronauts. The Artemis Gardens Lunar Greenhouse Project will design and prototype an autonomous plant growth habitat that enables sustainable crop production beneath the lunar surface. 

The mission objective is to study the effects of the radiation shielded environment and altered gravity on the germination and growth of Wisconsin Fast Plants AstroPlants (Brassica Rapa). The system will germinate, grow, monitor, and harvest 20 plants within a fully enclosed greenhouse buried 3 meters under lunar regolith at an Artemis III landing site near the lunar south pole.

To meet mission requirements, the greenhouse shall operate autonomously for 15 days while maintaining a controlled environment to ensure plant health. It must be compact enough for deployment by a single astronaut during an EVA and assembled using tools available at the Artemis Base Camp. The system will continuously monitor environmental and plant health parameters, including O₂, CO₂, temperature, humidity, and soil moisture, while transmitting telemetry and science data to a nearby ground station every four hours.

The planned design deliverable is a functional prototype of the greenhouse system, demonstrating feasibility for future lunar agricultural missions.