The Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence in Plants for Space (P4S) is developing technologies to enable humans to survive and thrive in Space, reducing the dependence on constant resupply, and using this lens to transform the resilience and sustainability of plant and food production on Earth.
P4S is a 7-year transdisciplinary research venture that brings together skillsets from systems and process engineering, plant biology, synthetic biology, food chemistry, psychology, education and Space law. Our international consortium has representation across a wide range of industries including Space, controlled environment agriculture, food and biomanufacturing.
P4S has four core missions.
- Complete nutrition plant-based foods
- Zero-waste plants optimised for controlled environments
- On-demand bioresource production
- Future-ready workforce and society
We will have a standing load of 200 Australian-based researchers by 2026 at our five foundational universities, the Universities of Adelaide, Melbourne, Western Australia, La Trobe and Flinders, and aim to train over 400 researchers by 2031.
P4S is supported by a further 29 Australian and international partners including the Australian Space Agency, NASA, Axiom Space, Vertical Future, Space Lab Technologies, GAIA Project Australia, Australian Defence Science and Technology Group, the Universities of California, Berkeley and Davis, University of Cambridge, ETH Zurich and the Victorian Space Science Education Centre.
P4S is funded by the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council.