Growing Beyond Earth Challenge STEM Education Program

The Growing Beyond Earth Project (GBE) is a STEM education initiative was designed to have middle and high school students conduct experiments that expand food options and increase plant diversity for spaceflight by evaluating multiple edible plants that meet NASA’s criteria for size and edibility. The program was designed in partnership with NASA's Exploration Research and Technology Program researchers at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) to directly support NASA research on growing plants in space. GBE was initiated by Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in collaboration with and Miami-Dade County Public School District. Project goals are to: (1) improve STEM instruction in schools by providing authentic research experiments that have real world implications through curricular activities that meet STEM education needs, comprehensive teacher training, summer-long internships and the development of replicable training modules; (2) increase and sustain youth and public engagement in STEM related fields; (3) better serve groups historically underrepresented in STEM fields; and (4) support current and future NASA research by identifying and testing new plant varieties for future growth in space. During the 2018-19 academic year, 163 school classrooms in Florida, Puerto Rico, Colorado, Nebraska, Michigan, New York, Georgia and Ohio participated in the program. Since the program's inception, students have tested 130 varieties of edible plants and collected tens of thousands of points of data that has been shared directly with the researchers at KSC.