| Abstract Scope |
Plants will play a vital role in future space missions, not only by offering renewable food sources and psychological support for astronauts, but also by establishing a stable ecological system, producing essential substances including oxygen, medication, vaccines, and industrial raw materials for extraterrestrial colonization. Direct monitoring of plant health is limited to manual measurement and camera imaging primarily, which are often laborious and lack precision. Printed electronics emerge as a promising technology for remote, autonomous plant health monitoring for space missions requiring minimal human effort, resources, and energy. In our recent works, we develop printed transparent, conjugated polymer-based strain sensor that achieves robust and precise plant growth monitoring with an exceptionally high operating strain for long term plant growth monitoring. Combining with wireless technology, we achieve remote, autonomous tracking of plant growth that unveils the sensitivity of leaf elongation to light/dark cycles challenging to obtain using other methods. |