Abstract <p>Investigation of space plant growth under real conditions is restricted currently to studies at the International Space Station (ISS), satellites, and suborbital rocket flights. This study aims at informing controlled environment agriculture under stress, with potential application to space analogue modelling. Space studies suffer from limitations in repeatability and failures of process control have been reported. The value of space studies could possibly could be amplified, when there is a possibility to reproduce the space experiment on Earth, and, at best, performing this in real-time to inform and optimize the space experiment. Therefore, we propose, for the first time, the concept of ‘physical twin-sender’ (“space”) and ‘physical twin-receiver’ (“Earth”), as a communicative and finally decision-making interaction within a digital twin concept. To test the efficacy of commercial machine-leaning modelling of plant growth for these connected physical twins, lettuce growth was investigated on a mountain with extreme weather (physical twin-sender) and the extreme conditions were replicated in a growth chamber (physical twin-receiver). This follows ESA’s credo to develop joint space-Earth engineering challenges and NASA’s ‘digital triplet’ framework. In this lieu, lettuce is grown in pots with soil and as hydroponic solution.</p> Graphical Abstract <p></p>