PONDS was developed for flight in NASA’s Vegetable Production System (Veggie) facility by Redwire, with collaboration from Tupperware Brands. It can grow a wide variety of plants in space, and requires far less monitoring and maintenance time from flight crews than other plant growth devices.

Up to six of the new units can be installed in Veggie at one time. Like the plant pillows they will replace, the PONDS devices are envisioned to be single use items, which will be discarded after the plants are grown and harvested on orbit.