We caught up with her from the Kennedy Space Center and kicked off our conversation around what it takes to make plants and the people tending them thrive far from Earth

EarthSo for plants, no matter where you're gonna grow them, there, there are a variety of challenges and, and there are, there are what we call the five cardinal factors of growth, so the five things that have to be within a certain range for plants to grow well.

So these would be light, temperature, moisture, nutrients, and atmosphere.

So no matter where you're growing, you have to get these in the right range for plants to be happy.

And, you know, we see challenges on Earth with things like drought or floods or extreme heat or extreme cold, for instance.

So the same challenges, uh, apply for growing in what we call controlled environments, and so, uh, a spacecraft or a space habitat would be a controlled environment, just like factory farms on Earth are also controlled environments, or greenhouses are, are kind of semi-controlled.

In space, the challenges are a little different, but we also have some that overlap really well with terrestrial challenges for crop production.

And so is that what you're focused on, or are you also-- You, you mentioned soil, so I wanna understand, are we thinking that we're gonna grow in soil or is it gonna be hydroponics or maybe a mixture of both?