Australian plant monitoring technologies will be tested in space as part of the iLAuNCH Trailblazer project, demonstrating key opportunities for sustainable food production in space and on Earth.
How agriculture is vital to the Earth, and growing plants in space will become an important source of food for long-duration space missions. Automated technologies for growing food crops are critically important for space exploration, and also have significant commercial potential for use on Earth.
This project is a continuation of research at the University of Southern Queensland (UniSQ), funded by the Australian Space Agency in 2021-2022. In the course of these studies, plant monitoring algorithms based on machine vision were developed. They are being improved by the Autonomous Agriculture for Space Exploration consortium, which is led by the British company Vertical Future and funded by the UK and Australian space agencies in 2024-2025.
Main aspects of the project:
Machine vision in space - UniSQ tests algorithms for early detection of plant health problems on a unique set of plant images, growing in the space environment.
Plant Breeding Systems - The University of Adelaide will study the biology of plant stress tolerance.
Hardware Innovation – Yuri Gravity to Deliver Space-Certified Plant Growing Camera with Built-in Visual Monitoring Capabilities.
Application on Earth – Together with Australian agribusiness Medicinal Harvest, UniSQ will evaluate the commercial benefits of this technology for controlled farming environments (CEA).
Machine vision has enormous potential for automated plant health monitoring, which opens up possibilities for both food production in space, and for agricultural systems on Earth.
Source: https://news.satnews.com/2025/04/01/growing-the-future-aussie-tech-takes-plant-monitoring-to-space/