This section describes the concept of developing a greenhouse facility in low Earth orbit (LEO). Future human space exploration may require regenerative life support capabilities. Until now, the general concepts of space exploration are either to "take everything with you" or "live off the land" (ISRU). The Orbital Greenhouse would demonstrate a way to a third alternative: "live off your spaceship".

The Orbital Greenhouse would be used for different purposes. It would demonstrate the capacity for growing plants in space, show the capacity of reusing water and carbonated materials in space, verify the usage of robots for greenhouse exploitation, and would develop teleoperated and closed-loop robots for farm usage. Another purpose is to increase public interest. Schools could send their own seeds, people can adopt plants and take care of them by teleoperation. The Orbital Greenhouse is a good mission for building international cooperation. By launching greenhouse components on refurbished military rockets, the public will see a true "swords into plowshares" process in action. They see a new way of utilizing space as a way to further international efforts towards peace. Some commercial issues are that there should not be a regulation or tax on space grown that could be supplied to the ISS. It may become necessary to develop new technologies like a highly regenerative environmental control and life support system (ECLSS). The use of artificial gravity would be another technology to be tested on the Orbital Greenhouse Precursor Mission.

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