When Jacob Torres decided to pursue a master’s thesis at Purdue University, he was following a long tradition: studying in the Neil Armstrong building and finding inspiration in the legacy of NASA engineers and astronauts.
But while his initial sights were set on high-tech engineering—like applying for roles on the Mars 2020 rover project, the Solar Parker probe, or 3D printing components for spacesuits—Torres’s destiny lay elsewhere. A last-minute application for a role in “plant growth for food production in microgravity” led him to the Kennedy Space Center (KSC).
“It said plant growth for food production in microgravity I go that sounds really cool,” Torres recalled. This unlikely pivot made sense: his family is from northern New Mexico and has been farming there for hundreds of years, meaning growing crops is “ingrained in my DNA”.
Torres, who is now known as “Pepper Seed” Torres, spent years as a NASA horticultural scientist helping pave the way for humanity to thrive on long-duration missions to the Moon and Mars.
The Spice of Survival in Space
While KSC is famous for launching rockets, it is also the designated crop growth center for NASA. The challenge is simple: astronauts need food to survive long-duration missions, and pre-packaged, freeze-dried meals degrade in vitamins, nutrients, and taste over the six months to a year it takes to reach Mars.
The solution is to set up greenhouses or growth spaces where astronauts can grow fresh supplements like fruits, vegetables, and leafy greens. Torres’s job was to help develop the necessary technologies, including lighting, irrigation, and even robots that help pollinate the flowers.
His career-defining moment, the true “aha moment,” occurred during his 2018 internship. NASA scientists were discussing the need to grow fruit and vegetables, not just leafy greens like lettuce and spinach.
“In that meeting somebody said peppers,” Torres recounted. Since he is from New Mexico, famous for its chili peppers, his ears perked up. Then, someone mentioned the word “Hatch,” a town famous for growing chili.
Torres realized he was in a room with NASA scientists who wanted to grow the pepper as the first fruit in space, and he knew he was the right man for the job: “I’ve been growing chili and peppers my whole life”.
The Agitation Technique
After his initial internship, Torres stayed on, eventually signing up for a scientist role even though he was an engineer by education, and contributed to 17 NASA space biology experiments.
One of the key scientific hurdles was pollination. Peppers (and tomatoes, which were also considered) are ideal for space because they do not require male and female flowers to transfer pollen. Instead, the pollen is encased in one flower.
All that is required is “some kind of mechanized agitation” to shake the pollen loose.
Torres explained that on Earth, this is why hitting your plants with a broom or shaking them helps. In space, the astronauts—whom Torres calls “hatchstronauts”—put on gloves and poked each flower with their finger to pollinate them successfully.
Defying Destiny and Distributing Seeds
Despite achieving success at NASA, Torres admitted his biggest personal challenge was defeating his own “predetermined destiny”. His family has lived in his current town for hundreds, and in some parts, thousands of years, and historically, nobody had gone out to get a master’s degree or work with an organization like NASA.
He overcame this internal hurdle with a simple mantra: “I will make myself get there”. Torres found that when he felt like he didn’t belong, he would just get dressed and go anyway, and once he got there, everything would fall into place. Having gone out to learn these things, he now focuses on bringing his knowledge back to his community to contribute.
This philosophy of contribution is embedded in his famous nickname. The “Pepper Seed” moniker was earned not from the space mission itself, but from an educational outreach initiative during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Torres posted a challenge on Facebook asking people to grow a pepper plant to help him learn how to grow them in a controlled environment. His inbox was immediately filled with seed requests.
“We ultimately got NASA funding I sent 75,000 seed packets around the world including to Antarctica,” he said.
He humorously noted that while Johnny Appleseed is famous for sending seeds across the Midwest, “I got him beat I’ve covered the world the stratosphere and the International Space Station”.
Today, Torres is running the Moon Chili Challenge, where he visits students, gives them seeds, and collects data to build a database to tell NASA: “when you’re ready to grow fruit on moon we have a crop here that’s ready to go”.
Ultimately, his advice to aspiring innovators is not about engineering prowess, but about mental fortitude. While hard work is expected, he stresses that we must focus on how we treat ourselves during that work.
“Be nice to yourself as you move through it,” Torres advises, noting that failures are simply “opportunities to learn” and should be worn as “badges of honor”.
