Interstellar Lab, a French company with facilities on Merritt Island, has joined forces with the Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Youth Foundation to grow roses on the moon. Mission Little Prince is planning to launch in 2027, and will land on the lunar surface aboard Astrolab’s FLEX rover.

Interstellar said in a press release from earlier in the year that, “This collaboration with the Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Youth Foundation brings an artistic and educational dimension to this mission, stimulating young people’s imagination and promoting the values of curiosity, open-mindedness and environmental preservation.”

“Since its first publication in France in 1946, The Little Prince has become a universal phenomenon, carrying Antoine de Saint Exupéry’s humanist message that transcends cultural and temporal barriers, weaving deep bonds between generations and cultures the world over.”

What or Who Is The Little Prince?

The Little Prince is a novella written and illustrated by French writer and military pilot Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. It has sold an estimated 140 million copies worldwide and been translated into over 500 languages. In it, a young prince visits various planets, including Earth, and addresses themes of loneliness, friendship, love, and loss.

While it is ostensibly written as children’s book, The Little Prince makes observations about life, adults, and human nature. Many literary scholars consider the slim volume to be one of the 100 best pieces of literature written in the 20th century — no small feat in a time period where writers like Hemmingway, Fitzgerald, Nabokov, James Joyce and too many others to name made their mark on Western culture.

While it is only briefly mentioned in the story, a rose teaches The Little Prince about love – for which, there can be no better symbol. Hence, the idea of roses on the moon.

Practical Applications

Romantic symbolism aside, the are sound technical reasons for Interstellar to take on the experiment. The company states its mission is to “preserve life on Earth and expand it into space.” They add that they are “working to grow plants and foodstuffs in space,” and states their mission is to “preserve biodiversity on Earth and help it become multi-planetary.” To that end, Interstellar is a finalist in NASA’s “Deep Space Food Challenge” where they have created a modular bioregenerative system for producing fresh microgreens, vegetables, mushrooms, and insects. Growing roses in conditions as harsh as the moon will prove to be a great testing ground for the company’s technologies and capabilities.

Food is a major focus in NASA and other agencies planning for long-term space missions, and experiments to that end are being conducted on the International Space Station today.