NASA's SpaceX Crew-13 Prepares to Grow 'Veggies' | International Space Station

NASA's SpaceX Crew-13 Prepares to Grow 'Veggies' | International Space Station

From left, Trent Smith, a senior leader of the NASA Kennedy Space Crop Production team, welcomes NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins, Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronaut Joshua Kutryk, and NASA astronaut Luke Delaney to the Plant Processing Area inside the Space Systems Processing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for a tour of the facility on Tuesday, May 12, 2026. Watkins, Delaney, and Kutryk, along with Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov (not pictured), are part of NASA's SpaceX Crew-13 mission to the International Space Station and will explore the possibility of growing crops outside of the station’s Veggie chamber—one of two enclosed areas currently used to grow crops on the orbiting laboratory.

NASA astronaut Luke Delaney (front), along with Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronaut Joshua Kutryk, NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Stan Love, Project Scientist Natasha Haveman, and Trent Smith, a senior leader of the NASA Kennedy Space Crop Production team, view microgreens at the Plant Processing Area inside the Space Systems Processing Facility.

This photograph shows microgreens grown at the Plant Processing Area inside the Space Systems Processing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Tuesday, May 12, 2026.

NASA's SpaceX Crew-13 emblem

NASA's Vegetable Production System, known as Veggie, is a space garden residing on the International Space Station. Veggie’s purpose is to help NASA study plant growth in microgravity, while adding fresh food to the astronauts’ diet and enhancing happiness and well-being on the orbiting laboratory. NASA's SpaceX Crew-13 mission to the International Space Station will explore the possibility of growing crops outside of the station’s Veggie chamber—one of two enclosed areas currently used to grow crops on the orbiting laboratory. 

They visited NASA project scientist Natasha Haveman and Trent Smith, a senior leader of the NASA Kennedy Space Crop Production team. They also viewed microgreens at the Plant Processing Area inside the Space Systems Processing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Crew-13 members NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins, Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronaut Joshua Kutryk, and NASA astronaut Luke Delaney joined a tour of the facility on Tuesday, May 12, 2026.

NASA Kennedy is home to the agency’s space crop production research efforts, including a team focused on growing crops to feed astronauts at the International Space Station and on other long duration missions to the Moon and Mars.

Learn more about the VEGGIE experiment: https://science.nasa.gov/mission/veggie/

This flight is the 13th crew rotation with SpaceX to the space station as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program (CCP). NASA is advancing the launch date of Crew-13 from November to help increase the frequency of U.S. crew rotation missions to the space station. The crew will conduct scientific investigations and technology demonstrations to help prepare humans for future exploration missions to the Moon and Mars, and benefit people on Earth.

An international partnership of space agencies provides and operates the elements of the International Space Station (ISS). The principals are the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan, and Canada.

Image Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett
Date: May 12, 2026

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