Twenty-seven ISS astronauts took part in a rare psychology study that asked a simple question inside one of the least natural places humans have ever lived: what does it feel like to raise food in orbit? Their answers point in a mostly positive direction. Across long missions, crew members generally described crop work as enjoyable, engaging, meaningful and mentally stimulating.
The article comes from an npj Microgravity study on the behavioral health side of ISS plant growth experiments. The researchers did not test whether plants prevent depression or solve isolation stress. They measured self-reported experiences with tending, viewing and eating crops, then checked how those ratings changed across time and across specific tasks.
Results like these attract attention because a Mars crew will live for many months inside a sealed habitat where fresh smells, living color and hands-on food preparation could carry unusual weight. A space garden can add nutrition, but this paper argues that the daily contact may also support crew morale, sensory variety and a stronger feeling of connection to Earth.
What the survey actually measured
The study followed 27 long-duration astronauts who worked with crop systems on the International Space Station. Nineteen were men and eight were women. Twenty-three flew standard missions of about six months, while four spent about twelve months in orbit. The average mission length was 182 days for the standard group and 332 days for the extended group.
Researchers used the Behavioral Health & Performance Veggie Survey before flight, during the crop experiment and again just after landing. In mission, astronauts rated how the plant work affected mood, wellbeing, mission task performance, relationships with crewmates, Earth connection and desire to harvest or eat the produce. They also logged how much time they spent on tasks such as setup, watering, thinning, photography, harvesting, cleanup, voluntary viewing and consumption.
A 2021 NASA overview described many of the same survey themes before the project was complete, including meaning, task demand, sensory effects and changes in connection to Earth. The final paper adds something stronger than anecdote. It pools repeated responses across missions and asks which parts of crop care were linked with the most favorable ratings.
How much time crews gave to the plants
Astronauts spent an average of 6.17 hours per month on crop tasks after early setup outliers were removed from the analysis. The work was not limited to watering. Crew members installed hardware, thinned seedlings, opened wicks, removed dead material, photographed growth, harvested crops and later cleaned both produce and hardware.
The crops lived inside the open Veggie chamber or the more enclosed Advanced Plant Habitat. NASA notes on growing plants in space explain why those systems exist in the first place: they help researchers study microgravity plant growth while also supplying fresh food and a more pleasant living environment for the crew.
The workload helps explain why the paper avoided romantic claims about orbital gardening. Some duties were clearly attractive and some were routine. The survey therefore captured a mix of labor, leisure and sensory contact, which makes the results more useful than a simple yes or no question about whether astronauts liked plants in general.
Which tasks astronauts enjoyed most
The clearest ranking came from the task ratings themselves. Consuming fresh produce received the highest average enjoyment score at 6.25 on a 7-point scale. Voluntary viewing of the plants followed close behind at 6.00. Harvesting, thinning and watering also scored well, while setup, photography, pollinating and debris removal stayed closer to the middle.
Cleanup stood apart in the opposite direction. Its average score was 3.50, the lowest in the set and slightly on the unpleasant side of the scale. The paper notes that cleanup could mean wiping down produce before eating it or cleaning the hardware after a growth run, both of which add time without offering much of the sensory reward that comes from watching or tasting the plants.
NASA makes a similar practical point in its Station Science 101 plant research page, where astronauts are described as enjoying the gardening time and looking forward to eating what they grow. The new study sharpens that general observation by showing which subtasks likely drive the good feelings and which ones designers may want to streamline.
What the plants seemed to do for mood and Earth connection
On the main behavioral questions, average ratings were usually above the midpoint. Astronauts rated the crop system at 5.25 for mood, 5.22 for wellbeing, 5.04 for relationships with crewmates and 5.42 for Earth connection. Desire to harvest plants and desire to consume plants also landed above 5, which suggests the garden was tied to anticipation as well as immediate experience.
Most of those ratings stayed fairly steady over time instead of fading as the missions continued. A few measures showed small positive links with time, including mission task performance, relationships with crewmates and desire to consume food. The paper also found that sensory ratings for sight, smell, taste and touch grew more pleasant over time, a pattern consistent with the idea that repeated contact with living plants can remain valuable inside a sterile habitat.
The study did report some sex differences, with women in the sample giving higher ratings than men for wellbeing, relationships with crewmates and Earth connection. Those findings deserve caution because the female subgroup was small. They still hint that space agriculture may not affect every crew member in the same way, which is useful for mission planners thinking about task assignment and habitat design.
Why viewing and eating the plants stood out
When researchers compared the most enjoyable subtasks with the least enjoyable ones, the strongest pattern came from the pair of activities astronauts liked best: seeing the plants and eating the harvest. Crew members who had recently done those tasks reported more pleasant sensory stimulation across sight, smell, taste and touch. They also gave higher ratings for mood, wellbeing and desire to consume the crops.
The same group also showed weaker but suggestive advantages in perceived task performance, crew relationships, Earth connection and desire to harvest. The paper treats those latter results carefully because some adjusted values were marginal. Even so, the direction stayed consistent. The benefits clustered around direct contact with living plants rather than around the full list of maintenance chores.
That task pattern matches NASA’s Veg-05 investigation summary, which frames crop growth as both food production and a test of the overall behavioral health value of fresh produce in orbit. The new paper adds that access and visibility may be central design features. A hidden plant system that is harder to see or harder to taste could miss much of the psychological payoff.
What the study can and cannot prove
The paper offers a careful case for plants as a resilience countermeasure in isolated habitats, but it remains a survey study. It measured self-reported experiences, not clinical diagnoses or objective psychiatric outcomes. It also combined responses from several crop projects, several crop types and two growth systems, which is useful for breadth but limits precision about any single plant or setup.
Sample size is another limit. Twenty-seven astronauts is a substantial group for ISS research, yet it remains small by normal psychology standards. Some follow-up comparisons were probably underpowered and the sex-specific results are especially tentative. The study also cannot fully separate the effect of living greenery from the effect of novelty, fresh flavor, mission relevance or the reward of sharing the produce with crewmates.
Even with those limits, the findings push space psychology in a practical direction. If future stations or Mars transit habitats include crop systems, the paper suggests crews may benefit most when the plants are easy to see, easy to smell and genuinely available to eat, while tedious sanitation and hardware cleanup are reduced as much as possible.
