Release of the Report of Lunar Farming Concept Study Working Group 1st  (summary version)

August,2019
National Research and Development Agency
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)
Space Exploration Innovation Hub Center



 JAXA Space Exploration Innovation Hub Center (hereinafter “Exploration Hub”) aims to produce food in the future space, and has been working for about two years since March 2017 to study of the realization of the concept of “Lunar farming” on the moon.

 As the background of the study,while future space exploration is gaining momentum for the human race to venture out onto the moon, and Exploration Hub received many proposals for applications aimed at applying to space farms and lunar farms from companies and universities related to plant factories on the ground. However, although the study of lunar farms in JAXA was conducted about 30 years ago at the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, in reality there have not been any further specific studies since then. For this reason, we established the Lunar Farming Concept Study Working Group (Chair: Professor Goto, Chiba University) with the help of the leader in plant factory research in Japan, with the aim of introducing state-of-the-art plant factory technology on Earth developed over the last 30 years, and once again to study the lunar farm system.

 For this study,we sought the cooperation of university and private sector experts who are highly interested in lunar farming as members, and carried out studies by dividing the experts into 4 subgroups of cultivation technology, unmanned technology,recycling, and overall system.

 In this report, we summarize the results of each technical field based on the concept of the lunar farming that JAXA / Japan considers. Through this report, we intend to develop research activities that will inspire innovation in plant factories and bio-business on Earth as well as on lunar farms.

 The Report of the Lunar Farming Concept Study Working Group 1st(summary version) is available at the following link on this website.



Overall image of the Lunar Farm (Produced figure based on the study of the Lunar Farming Concept Study Working Group)








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