Drea Hineman, a University of Wyoming student from Gillette, has earned regional recognition for her innovative space-farming research supported by NASA.
Hineman is a senior majoring in plant production and protection in the UW Department of Plant Sciences. As a Wyoming NASA Space Grant Consortium research fellow, she studies sustainable food production in reduced-gravity environments—in other words, farming in space.
The Wyoming NASA Space Grant Consortium sponsors education and research programs in support of NASA missions. Hineman’s fellowship project addresses a key problem astronauts face when cultivating lettuce plants in space: salt accumulation in the soil.
Reduced gravity also means reduced drainage. Aboard the International Space Station, water—and salts dissolved in that water—don’t drain away like they would on Earth. Instead of exiting the growing pod, salt accumulates in the soil, stressing the plants.
Starting in July 2025, Hineman designed and executed a series of ongoing experiments examining salt tolerance in lettuce exposed to environmental stressors present in reduced-gravity environments.
To mimic water movement under reduced-gravity conditions, she used an automatic sensor-based irrigation system at the Laramie Research and Extension Center greenhouse.
Hineman first learned to operate the system as a research apprentice in Assistant Professor JJ Chen’s lab. A faculty member in the Department of Plant Sciences, Chen later became Hineman’s mentor in the NASA fellowship program.
“She was working on a specialty crop project [in my lab], then she started to cultivate her own ideas about salinity [that were] relevant to the fellowship,” he recalls. “This is her own idea, her own research.”
The NASA fellowship program is very competitive, he adds. Of the 29 undergraduates who applied for the 2025 fellowship, Hineman’s application was ranked first.
Last month, Hineman presented her research at a regional event in Boise, Idaho, organized by the educational nonprofit Spacepoint. The organization’s mission is to raise awareness of and encourage participation in the space industry, says founder and director Kyle Averill.
The recent Spacepoint symposium featured the theme interplanetary life, with the goal of sparking interest in careers related to the space industry. While open to the public, the event was designed primarily for high school students, college students, and mid-career professionals.
Presentations and research posters, including Hineman’s, highlighted “examples of work, research, and development going on in the industry, from propulsion to food production…how to get there, how to survive, how to thrive,” Averill explains.
As a plant scientist, Hineman brought a unique perspective to the conference, introducing some participants to space farming for the first time.
That’s just what Spacepoint events are intended to do, Averill says—make the space industry accessible to a wider audience by connecting it to their interests on Earth.
“As the only agriculture major student invited to present at the conference, Drea effectively communicated to attendees from Washington, Idaho, Montana, and California that students can meaningfully contribute to science and space exploration,” says Chen.
Hineman is currently conducting a second round of trials investigating whether inoculating lettuce plants with fungi can help mitigate the effects of increased salinity.
“I never thought that I’d be capable of this,” she reflects. “When you think of Wyoming, you don’t think, ‘Oh yeah, I can go to college and do a space farming research project’…But once I found out what I was really interested in, that’s when I realized my drive.”
To learn more about space-farming research projects conducted in Chen’s lab, contact him at jchen20@uwyo.edu. For more information on the Wyoming NASA Space Grant Consortium, visit www.wyomingspacegrant.org.
