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Roto-Gro Set To Blast Into Space With Food Production System
Roto-Gro is capitalizing on the space exploration boom, as it applies to a NASA challenge developing novel food production technologies to feed astronauts on long-term missions
Advanced Agritech Company Roto-Gro International (ASX: RGI) Is Aiming To Feed The World’s Astronauts.
August 9, 2021
Roto-Gro is capitalizing on the space exploration boom, as it applies to a NASA challenge developing novel food production technologies to feed astronauts on long-term missions.
Advanced agritech company Roto-Gro International (ASX:RGI) is aiming to feed the world’s astronauts as it capitalizes on innovations in food production systems and a boom in space exploration.
Roto-Gro World Wide (Canada), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Roto-Gro International, has applied to the Deep Space Food Challenge as part of its first step into the space agriculture sector.
Administered under an international collaboration between National Aeronautics and the Space Administration (NASA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), the international competition aims to incentivize the development of novel food production technologies needed for long-development space missions and terrestrial applications.
Roto-Gro’s application highlight’s the technological diversification and adaptability of its patented proprietary indoor vertical farming technology.
Astronauts’ food needs changing as missions evolve
Astronauts currently receive food from spacecrafts regularly launching from Earth, for example to the International Space Station.
However, NASA and the CSA recognize that as the distance and duration of space exploration missions increase, the current method of feeding astronauts will no longer be sustainable.
Future astronauts will be required to use food production systems on their voyages and be self-sustaining. The challenge aims to inspire the agricultural industry to help bring innovative food production technologies to space, reducing the need for resupply from earth and ensuring astronauts have continuous safe and nutritious food supplies.
The ability to develop sustainable food production is considered the crucial next step for longer-term human presence on the lunar surface and the future missions to Mars.
The challenge is not only about space exploration but also missions in extreme arid and resource-scarce environments on Earth. Like space, input efficiency will be key, including the efficient use of water and electricity to reduce resources needed for food production here on Earth.
Adapting Roto-Gro’s existing models key to space success
A new Roto-Gro rotational garden system — branded Roto-Gro Beyond Earth — will be designed with engineering adapted-off components from its existing Model 420 and Model 710 rotational garden systems.
Roto-Gro Beyond Earth will be a smaller, more portable version of the Model 420 but feature the injection feed system from the Model 710, significantly reducing the required resource inputs while maximizing nutritional outputs when compared to other indoor farming technologies.
Roto-Gro CEO Michael Di Tommaso said Roto-Gro Beyond Earth will enhance the already existing, unique benefits of its rotational garden systems, optimizing both the operational efficiencies and yield per m2, which is crucial to the development and prospective use of food production systems in space.
“The technology developed to form the application to the challenge is astoundingly demonstrating the vast applicability and sheer innovation of the company’s technology,” Di Tommaso said.
He said the company had developed several key relationships with organizations currently providing food system solutions for long-duration space voyages, along with others focused on using space to solve problems we are experiencing on earth.
“We look to develop and foster these relationships moving forward, further strengthening our position in the sector,” Di Tommaso said.
He said entering the space agricultural sector was a natural progression for Roto-Gro, supporting its vision to provide sustainable technological solutions for agricultural cultivation, critical to ensuring global food security.
“Food system innovation is crucial to our progression in space, and we are excited with the prospect of moving to the next phase of the Deep Space Food Challenge, while also generating other opportunities to develop and implement Roto-Gro’s technology in the industry,” Di Tommaso said.
Roto-Gro global forecasts international growth
Established in 2015, Roto-Gro is continuing to attract interest on a global scale.
The company recently partnered with agriculture company Verity Greens Inc. who has signed a binding $10M Technology License to purchase 624 RotoGro Model 710 rotational garden systems, with the first, flagship indoor vertical farming facility to be built in Canada.
The deal is expected to generate long-term, sustained recurring revenue with Di Tommaso hailing it as not only a “win-win” for both companies but a venture that works on a socially responsible level by helping tackle global food shortages.
“RotoGro will introduce our revolutionary technology into the booming indoor vertical farming space, while Verity Greens, utilizing the RotoGro Garden Systems and supporting technology, will operate with a viable and cost-effective competitive advantage,” he said.
“Verity Green’s first facility also serves to further its objectives – to roll out indoor vertical farming facilities globally utilizing RotoGro’s technology, not only to generate substantial revenue for both companies but also to provide a truly sustainable solution to address the issues caused by food insecurity.”
Lead photo: Pic: Giphy
This article was developed in collaboration with Roto-Gro International, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.
This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.
Start of A New Series of Tests For Plant Cultivation on The Moon And Mars
The EDEN ISS greenhouse uses particularly robust varieties that were selected by the EDEN ISS Project team and from experiments at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center and as part of the VEGGIE project on the ISS
MAY 4, 2021
NASA Seeds Germinate in
DLR’s EDEN ISS Greenhouse
Start of a new series of tests for plant cultivation on the Moon and Mars
Nine weeks of darkness and temperatures down to minus 50 degrees Celsius. Under these harsh conditions of Antarctica, NASA and the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) have begun a joint series of experiments on vegetable cultivation techniques for use on the Moon and Mars. Until early 2022, NASA guest scientist Jess Bunchek will research how future astronauts could grow lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, and herbs, using as little time and energy as possible.
To this end, she will be working at DLR’s EDEN ISS Antarctic greenhouse, where she will put greenhouse technologies and plant varieties to the test. She is also recording any effects the greenhouse and its yield have on the isolated hibernation crew in the perpetual ice. Bunchek is part of the 10-person overwintering crew on Neumayer Station III, operated by the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI).
First harvest – Lettuce, mustard greens, radishes and herbs
“The polar night will soon begin here on the Antarctic Ekström Ice Shelf. With the nine other members of the overwintering crew, it almost feels like we are alone on another planet,” says Bunchek. “In this hostile world it’s fascinating to see the greenery thrive without soil and under artificial light.” Bunchek is a botanist from the Kennedy Space Center, where she has primarily supported the VEGGIE project on the International Space Station (ISS) She was able to sow the first seeds in recent weeks, following a technical reconditioning of the EDEN ISS platform conducted by her and the DLR team. The first harvest, which included lettuce, mustard greens, radishes, and various herbs, followed a few days ago.
NASA seeds and new nutrient supply system
The EDEN ISS greenhouse uses particularly robust varieties that were selected by the EDEN ISS Project team and from experiments at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center and as part of the VEGGIE project on the ISS. The DLR/NASA mission also aims to record and compare the growth and yield of the crop varieties under the conditions of the Antarctic greenhouse. An additional focus will be studying which microbes thrive in the greenhouse alongside the cultivated plants.
NASA will also be testing a plant watering concept in the EDEN Module that can operate in u-gravity settings, like the ISS. The system contains the water and delivers it to the plants by a passive method. “This will provide a side-by-side comparison with the aeroponically grown plants of EDEN ISS” says Ray Wheeler, plant physiologist at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. In aeroponic irrigation, the roots of the plants without soil are regularly sprayed with a nutrient solution.
Crew time – a precious commodity
Sowing, harvesting, tending, cleaning, maintaining, calibrating, repairing and conducting scientific activities. Bunchek records every second of her activities in the Antarctic greenhouse with a special time-recording eight-sided die, as crew time will be a precious commodity on future missions to the Moon and Mars. “In an initial test run of the greenhouse during the 2018 mission, we found that operations still took too much time,” explains EDEN ISS project leader Daniel Schubert from the DLR Institute of Space Systems in Bremen. “Now we are working on optimizing processes and procedures. We have learned a lot about operating a greenhouse under extreme conditions. We’re applying all this during the current joint DLR/NASA mission.” In addition to the crew’s time, the focus is on their well-being. The overwinterers regularly answer questions about their eating habits or how the plants affect their mood. “We hope to increase our understanding of having plants and fresh food for crews in remote, isolated settings like Neumayer III and ultimately for space” says Wheeler.
Eight months in isolation
On 19 January, Jess Bunchek reached the Antarctic continent on board the research vessel Polarstern. Since 19 March, the 10-person overwintering crew has been on their own at Neumayer Station III. “EDEN ISS is an asset for the crew in many ways,” says Tim Heitland, Medical Coordinator and Operations Manager at AWI. “I know from my own overwintering experience just how much you can begin to miss fresh produce. It’s not just about the taste, but also the smells, the colors, and the fascinating fact that something can grow in this inhospitable environment. That’s why there are always volunteers in the overwintering teams to help cultivate and harvest the plants.” The polar night at Neumayer Station III begins on 21 May, and the first rays of sunlight will not reach the station again until 23 July. Researchers for the summer season and new supplies will end the isolation of this year’s overwintering crew around the beginning of November.
The activities at the EDEN ISS Antarctic greenhouse can be followed on social media using the hashtag #MadeInAntarctica. The Antarctic greenhouse has Facebook and Instagram accounts, as well as a flicker image gallery. Jess Bunchek also writes about her personal experiences of the Antarctica mission in the dedicated DLR blog.
AUSTRALIA: NSW Architect’s Idea For Sustaining Life on Mars is a Winner
Calabrese’s submission outlined how rockets would send robotic self-building farms a year prior to the first human landing. Using Artificial Intelligence and 3D printing, these buildings, preloaded with seeds, would then assemble autonomously and begin growing enough fruits and vegetables to sustain nine astronauts for up to two years
7/12/2020
Architecture news & editorial desk
A proposal conceptualized by an NSW architect for an international design competition that sought ideas for sustaining life on Mars has won the top prize.
Giuseppe Calabrese, the senior architect at Council Approval Group – a small Australian town planning and architecture firm – was placed first at the international competition launched by the Californian smart city development company, Mars City Design, and backed by NASA. The primary objective of the competition was to source ideas to sustain human life on Mars for more than two years.
Calabrese’s submission outlined how rockets would send robotic self-building farms a year prior to the first human landing. Using Artificial Intelligence and 3D printing, these buildings, preloaded with seeds, would then assemble autonomously and begin growing enough fruits and vegetables to sustain nine astronauts for up to two years.
Last month, Calabrese was shortlisted in the top 10 designs, competing against international firms from the USA, Germany, United Arab Emirates, and Taiwan. On the live-streamed awards night recently, his submission was announced as the winner for ‘Mars City Design Urban Farming Challenge 2020’, which was presented by NASA astronaut, Col. Terry Virts.
Until less than a year ago, Calabrese spent his time designing granny flats, duplexes and boarding houses for investors. Following the COVID pandemic, he was able to keep his job thanks to the Job Keeper program. During this period, he was also able to use his surplus design time on a passion project – town planning on Mars. When the competition came up, he decided to apply his architectural skills to the challenge.
Competition founder Vera Mulyani was very impressed with the Australian submission, not only for the visually appealing designs but also for the fact that every detail was supported by hundreds of pages of research and scientific data.
“Our next step is to secure funding, so we can build a prototype of the winning designs, which include Calabrese's proposal, in the Californian desert,” Mulyani added.
Calabrese’s smart farm idea couldn’t have come at a more perfect time given that NASA’s latest high-tech Rover will be reaching Mars in February 2021 while Elon Musk is considering a mission to the red planet as early as 2024.
“Australia already leads the world in many farming practices. So why not in space? And when billionaire Elon Musk needs an architect to design his mansion on Mars, he now knows who to call,” Calabrese said with a smile.
Farming On Mars Will Be A Lot Harder Than ‘The Martian’ Made It Seem
Growing plants in Red Planet soil will require adding nutrients and removing toxic chemicals. To prepare for a future where astronauts could grow their own food on Mars, researchers are trying to grow crops in the lab with fake Martian dirt
Growing Plants In Red Planet Soil Will Require
Adding Nutrients And Removing Toxic Chemicals
To prepare for a future where astronauts could grow their own food on Mars, researchers are trying to grow crops in the lab with fake Martian dirt.
NOVEMBER 18, 2020
In the film The Martian, astronaut Mark Watney (played by Matt Damon) survives being stranded on the Red Planet by farming potatoes in Martian dirt fertilized with feces.
Future Mars astronauts could grow crops in dirt to avoid solely relying on resupply missions, and to grow a greater amount and variety of food than with hydroponics alone (SN: 11/4/11). But new lab experiments suggest that growing food on the Red Planet will be a lot more complicated than simply planting crops with poop (SN: 9/22/15).
Researchers planted lettuce and the weed Arabidopsis thaliana in three kinds of fake Mars dirt. Two were made from materials mined in Hawaii or the Mojave Desert that look like dirt on Mars. To mimic the makeup of the Martian surface even more closely, the third was made from scratch using volcanic rock, clays, salts and other chemical ingredients that NASA’s Curiosity rover has seen on the Red Planet (SN: 1/31/19). While both lettuce and A. thaliana survived in the Mars-like natural soils, neither could grow in the synthetic dirt, researchers report in the upcoming Jan. 15 Icarus.
“It’s not surprising at all that as you get [dirt] that’s more and more accurate, closer to Mars, that it gets harder and harder for plants to grow in it,” says planetary scientist Kevin Cannon of the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colo., who helped make the synthetic Mars dirt but wasn’t involved in the new study.
Soil on Earth is full of microbes and other organic matter that helps plants grow, but Mars dirt is basically crushed rock. The new result “tells you that if you want to grow plants on Mars using soil, you’re going to have to put in a lot of work to transform that material into something that plants can grow in,” Cannon says.
Biochemist Andrew Palmer and colleagues at the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne planted lettuce and A. thaliana seeds in imitation Mars dirt under controlled lighting and temperature indoors, just as astronauts would on Mars. The plants were cultivated at 22° Celsius and about 70 percent humidity.
Seeds of both species germinated and grew in dirt mined from Hawaii or the Mojave Desert, as long as the plants were fertilized with a cocktail of nitrogen, potassium, calcium, and other nutrients. No seeds of either species could germinate in the synthetic dirt, so “we would grow up plants under hydroponic-like conditions, and then we would transfer them” to the artificial dirt, Palmer says. But even when given fertilizer, those seedlings died within a week of transplanting.
In lab experiments, lettuce was able to grow in Mars-like soil from the Mojave Desert (pictured) as long as the soil was fertilized with nitrogen, potassium, calcium, and other nutrients. NATHAN HADLAND
Palmer’s team suspected that the problem with the synthetic Mars dirt was its high pH, which was about 9.5. The two natural soils had pH levels around 7. When the researchers treated the synthetic dirt with sulfuric acid to lower the pH to 7.2, transplanted seedlings survived an extra week but ultimately died.
The team also ran up against another problem: The original synthetic dirt recipe did not include calcium perchlorate, a toxic salt that recent observations suggest makeup to about 2 percent of the Martian surface. When Palmer’s team added it at concentrations similar to those seen on Mars, neither lettuce nor A. thaliana grew at all in the dirt.
“The perchlorate is a major problem” for Martian farming, says Edward Guinan, an astrobiologist at Villanova University in Pennsylvania who was not involved in the work. But calcium perchlorate may not have to be a showstopper. “There are bacteria on Earth that enjoy perchlorates as a food,” Guinan says. As the microbes eat the salt, they give off oxygen. If these bacteria were taken from Earth to Mars to munch on perchlorates in Martian dirt, Guinan imagines that the organisms could not only get rid of a toxic component of the dirt but perhaps also help produce breathable oxygen for astronauts.
What’s more, the exact treatment required to make Martian dirt farmable may vary, depending on where astronauts make their homestead. “It probably depends where you land, what the geology and chemistry of the soil is going to be,” Guinan says.
To explore how that variety might affect future agricultural practices, geochemist Laura Fackrell of the University of Georgia in Athens and colleagues mixed up five new types of faux Mars dirt. The recipes for these fake Martian materials, also reported in the Jan. 15 Icarus, are based on observations of Mars’ surface from the Curiosity, Spirit, and Opportunity rovers, as well as NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Each new artificial Mars dirt represents a mix of materials that could be found or made on the Red Planet. One is designed to represent the average composition across Mars, similar to the synthetic material created by Cannon’s team. The other four varieties have slightly different makeups, such as dirt that is particularly rich in carbonates or sulfates. This collection “expands the palette of what we have available” as test-beds for agricultural experiments, Fackrell says.
She’s now using her stock to run preliminary plant growth experiments. So far, a legume called moth bean, which has similar nutritional content to a soybean but is more drought-resistant has grown the best. “But they’re not necessarily super healthy,” Fackrell says. Future experiments could explore what nutrient cocktails help plants survive in the various fake Martian terrains. But this much is clear, Fackrell says: “It’s not quite as easy as it looks in The Martian.”
Questions or comments on this article? E-mail us at feedback@sciencenews.org
CITATIONS
A. Eichler et al. Challenging the agricultural viability of martian regolith simulants. Icarus. Vol. 354, January 15, 2021. doi: 10.1016/j.icarus.2020.114022.
L.E. Fackrell et al. Development of martian regolith and bedrock simulants: Potential and limitations of martian regolith as an in-situ resource. Icarus. Vol. 354, January 15, 2021. doi: 10.1016/j.icarus.2020.114055.
About Maria Temming
Maria Temming is the staff reporter for physical sciences, covering everything from chemistry to computer science and cosmology. She has a bachelor's degrees in physics and English, and a master's in science writing.
Lead photo: OSTAPENKOOLENA/ISTOCK/GETTY IMAGES PLUS
Abu Dhabi’s AgTech Ecosystem Expands Across Land, Sea And Space
The Abu Dhabi Investment Office (ADIO) announced today individual partnerships with Pure Harvest Smart Farms (Pure Harvest), FreshToHome, and Nanoracks that will see the companies receive financial and non-financial incentives totaling AED 152 million (USD 41 million)
ADIO partners with Pure Harvest Smart Farms, FreshToHome, and Nanoracks
AED 152 million (USD 41 million) incentives for ‘land, sea and space’ projects to increase AgTech capabilities for food production in arid and desert environments
New partnerships part of ADIO’s AgTech Incentive Programme, established under Ghadan 21, Abu Dhabi’s accelerator program
Abu Dhabi, UAE – 10 November 2020: Three innovative agriculture companies will develop cutting-edge projects in Abu Dhabi to boost the emirate’s agriculture technology (AgTech) capabilities across land, sea, and space. The Abu Dhabi Investment Office (ADIO) announced today individual partnerships with Pure Harvest Smart Farms (Pure Harvest), FreshToHome, and Nanoracks that will see the companies receive financial and non-financial incentives totaling AED 152 million (USD 41 million). The research and technologies developed by these companies will expand existing capabilities in Abu Dhabi’s AgTech ecosystem and promote innovation in the sector to address global food security challenges.
The new partnerships are a continuation of ADIO’s efforts to accelerate the growth of Abu Dhabi’s AgTech ecosystem through the AgTech Incentive Programme, which was established under Ghadan 21, Abu Dhabi’s accelerator program. The Programme is open to both local and international AgTech companies. The partnerships follow ADIO’s AED 367 million (USD 100 million) investment earlier this year to bring four AgTech pioneers – AeroFarms, Madar Farms, RNZ, and Responsive Drip Irrigation (RDI) – to the emirate to develop next-generation agriculture solutions in arid and desert climates.
H.E. Dr. Tariq Bin Hendi, Director General of ADIO, said: “Abu Dhabi is pressing ahead at full steam with our mission to ‘turn the desert green’ and solve long-term global food security issues. We have created an environment where innovative ideas can flourish and this has enabled the rapid expansion of our AgTech sector. Innovations from the companies we partnered with earlier this year are already propelling the growth of Abu Dhabi’s 24,000 farms. Partnering with Pure Harvest, FreshToHome and Nanoracks adds a realm of new capabilities to the ecosystem across land, sea, and space.”
Bin Hendi continued: “We are driving innovation across the entire agriculture value chain and this is producing a compounding effect that is benefiting farmers, innovators, and companies in our region and beyond.”
Pure Harvest, FreshToHome, and Nanoracks have been awarded financial and non-financial incentives to expand operations in Abu Dhabi. The competitive incentive packages include rebates on innovation-linked high-skilled payroll, high-tech CAPEX, as well as land, utility, and intellectual property support.
Since the beginning of 2020, ADIO has attracted seven AgTech companies to Abu Dhabi, each bringing a complementary skill to expand the ecosystem. ADIO’s new partnerships with Pure Harvest, FreshToHome, and Nanoracks will build on the achievements made by AeroFarms, Madar Farms, RNZ, and RDI, the AgTech pioneers ADIO partnered with earlier this year to establish R&D and production facilities in Abu Dhabi.
Partnerships with Pure Harvest, FreshToHome, Nanoracks
Pure Harvest is a home-grown, tech-enabled farming venture that uses cutting-edge food production systems to grow fresh fruits and vegetables in a climate-controlled environment, enabling year-round production anywhere, while using seven times less water compared to traditional farming methods. Pure Harvest will invest in smart farming and infrastructure technologies at its new farms in Al Ain, Abu Dhabi, to optimize growing conditions through hardware design innovations, artificial intelligence, autonomous growing and robotics, plant science research, and desert-optimized machines. The company will also progress R&D and deployment of a commercial-scale algae bioreactor production facility that will grow higher quality, healthier Omega-3 fatty acids without the limitations and challenges of traditional animal sources.
Sky Kurtz, Co-Founder, and CEO of Pure Harvest, said: “We are delighted to have received the support of ADIO to further invest in our home-grown, innovative growing solutions. It also serves as a powerful endorsement of our business case and mission as we pursue innovation to address food security locally and internationally. As one of the pioneering champions in the region’s emerging AgTech sector, this commitment will give us the resources we need to drive and expand our R&D capabilities and will position us for international expansion from our strategic base in Abu Dhabi. This partnership further demonstrates how committed the government is in supporting and enabling innovative technology companies, providing them with the tools, resources, and support to thrive and make a large-scale impact in the region.”
FreshToHome is an e-grocery platform for fresh, chemical-free produce. The company maintains complete control over its supply chain, inventory, and logistics by obtaining produce directly from the source through an AI-powered auction process. ADIO’s partnership will aid the expansion of FreshToHome’s land and sea operational and processing capabilities in the UAE, bringing expertise in aquaculture, contract farming for marine and freshwater fish species, and precision agriculture to Abu Dhabi. It will also invest in innovative fish farming technologies and cold chain.
Shan Kadavil, CEO and Co-Founder of FreshToHome, said: “At FreshToHome we use cutting-edge research in AI and precision aquaculture for furthering food security in a sustainable manner while also giving better value to consumers, fishermen, and farmers. To this end, we intend to bring our US patent pending AI-powered Virtual Commodities Exchange technology, our e-grocery platform, and our nano farm aquaculture technology to Abu Dhabi, enhancing food production and distribution for the region. ADIO has been a terrific partner to us and we are thankful for their support in helping us be part of the vision.”
US-based Nanoracks, the single largest commercial user of the International Space Station, opened its first UAE office in Abu Dhabi’s global tech ecosystem, Hub71, in 2019. Nanoracks is building the first-ever commercial AgTech space research program, the ‘StarLab Space Farming Center’, in Abu Dhabi as a commercial space research facility focused on advancing knowledge and technology for organisms and food produced in space and in equally extreme climates on Earth. The space-based technology will be applied to desert agriculture to address pressing environmental and food security challenges and to benefit long-term human space exploration.
Allen Herbert, SVP of Business Development and Strategy, and Head of Nanoracks, UAE, said: “Much of today’s technology used for vertical, urban and closed environment agriculture initially came from space research from 30 years ago, and Nanoracks is ready to synergize these technologies back to in-space exploration. We firmly believe that space research holds the keys to solving major challenges on Earth from climate change to food security. And our StarLab Space Farming Center in Abu Dhabi is just the beginning. We’re building a global research and development team that will produce and commercialize organisms, technology, and innovative products that will not only revolutionize farming in Earth’s deserts and harsh environments but also change the way humans are able to explore deeper into our universe.”
![Bishop greenhouse node 3-release[9].png](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/57c8695d5016e11e71be1d83/1605455646106-3SFP8ZAB64F42DKMZ4F0/Bishop+greenhouse+node+3-release%5B9%5D.png)
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Space Peppers to Spice Up Astronauts' Diets
Astronauts and cosmonauts spend a lot of time aboard space stations - sometimes more than a year at a time. When you're up there that long, it would be nice to bite into some freshly grown vegetables
Astronauts and cosmonauts spend a lot of time aboard space stations - sometimes more than a year at a time. When you're up there that long, it would be nice to bite into some freshly grown vegetables. Particularly if humans will return to the Moon or even go to Mars, it's essential to be able to grow fresh food there. Researchers are looking into the unique challenges of growing space veggies, learning a thing or two about cultivation on Earth in the process. One of them is Jacob Torres, who works at the Space Crop Production Lab at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. In a recent webinar, he shared his experiences conducting space agriculture research.
Jeff Kohler, who supports the Technology Transfer Program at NASA and hosted the webinar, said he met Jacob Torres about a year ago, when the latter submitted a proposal for a new plant nutrition system. Jacob was raised in a traditional farming community in New Mexico, so it's not entirely surprising that he ended up working in agriculture, albeit controlled environment agriculture.
Tap to pollinate
Kicking off the webinar with a video shot in one of his plant growth chambers, Jacob explained why (chile) peppers are particularly suitable to grow in space. First of all, there are no pollinators in space - you can't just open up a box of bees inside a space station. "With peppers", Jacob explains, "you can tap on one of the flowers, then a pepper starts to grow." This makes peppers more suitable than crops like cucumbers, which do require pollination. Another advantage is the high nutrient content of peppers, making them a welcome addition to the astronaut diet. And last but not least, peppers are both fresh and spicy, adding extra flavor to space food, which can sometimes taste bland due to the way taste buds behave in space.
Moon and Mars missions
The research Jacob and his team carry out at the Kennedy Space Center, serves astronauts on the International Space Station (where they use systems like Veggie and the Advanced Plant Habitat), but they're also looking at the bigger picture. With the Artemis program, NASA is looking to put people on the Moon again, and they also have their sights set on Mars. On those longer missions, astronauts will spend a lot of time in deep space such as on Gateway space stations, and later on the red planet itself, where they will appreciate having fresh grown food and fresh food will supplement the packaged diet. The main idea behind this is to add more vitamin C, K and B to space traveller's diet, which will be the team's mission for the next 10 to 15 years.
Spare parts
No matter how advanced NASA's technology may be, it's only a matter of time before a part starts to fail. "When this happens on the Moon, you can't just go to a shop to get spare parts, or order them through Amazon Prime - not yet at least", Jacob jokes. So what do you do then? When an acid addition pump in one of Jacob's NFT channels disintegrated, he found out it took two weeks to have a new one shipped. "Hand mixing the pH or stopping the experiment was not an option." Instead he had the disintegrated part 3D printed, and the system was back up and running in no time.
A bit of New Mexico on Mars
With the technical details sorted out, the next step is to figure out what variety of pepper to use. "So we hit up the literature to see what work had already been done and demonstrated. In New Mexico, chile peppers are a big part of the culture, so graduate students and professors have been writing research on that for over a century." Gathering pepper seeds from all over the world, it was found that one particular New Mexico pepper performed really well: Española Improved, a hybrid between Big Jim and Española peppers. Española also happens to be Jacob's hometown - "I'm really stoked about that", he commented.
Red Robin tomatoes growing in the water delivery test bed (DAP 88)
Light recipes
The Advanced Plant Habitat, one of the NASA-developed plant growth systems that Jacob works with, features LED light banks with all frequencies, provided by OSRAM. With the system, colors in LEDs can be adjusted, even the UV, to create recipes for specific crops (leafy green, peppers, and so on). Technology like this is absolutely vital in astrobiology, Jacob explains. "Growing crops won't be a primary thing that astronauts have time to do." In addition to the light recipe system, hyperspectral imaging to monitor crop health will also help them with that, and it may even work better than the human eye, according to Jacob.
Irrigation without gravity
Another issue when growing without gravity is irrigation. When you wring a towel in space, the water just sticks around the towel, as demonstrated in the video below by Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield. "The same thing happens with roots", Jacob explains. "Existing hydroponic systems are largely inoperable in microgravity." (The current system uses time-released fertilizers, but they would like to use a hydroponic system at some point.)
To find a solution to this problem, several candidate microgravity systems were tested against a control system. "Irrigation systems for microgravity should be sustainable, ideally even with reusable plant medium you don't have to throw away, featuring low heat production and energy use, minimal failure mode (without a pump, that would be awesome), reduced crew interaction, and it should be scalable. You should be able to do science on it, then scale it up to do crop production and grow a lot."
PPTNDS
The Passive Porous Tube Nutrient Delivery System (PPTNDS) was the solution to the irrigation problem, using the capillary force of water to force water up. "You can wick water up, the water evaporates from the tube, and water from the bag then replenishes it."
Jacob and his team used water bags like the ones used on the International Space Station, which they connected in a loop to the hoses. They put seeds on top of the tubes, wrapped them up with wrap, added water, air, light - and the crops started to grow, much to the team's delight.
Jacob grows lettuce, peppers, and tomatoes in the PPTNDS. The Red Robin tomatoes (top left) were still going strong 111 days after planting. The peppers (top right) didn't fare so well, but given that Jacob had forgotten about them for weeks, if not months, it's quite impressive that they still bore fruit.
When compared with the NFT control system, the PPTNDS uses much less water (about 25% of the standard amount of water). With only six plants grown on each system, the PPTNDS crops also used up only 25% of the space used in the control system, and the number of crew interactions is also a lot lower, which is a must in space. And as an added bonus, the PPTNDS also scored better in taste tests.
Back on Earth
So, what does this all mean for the non-astronauts among us? Well, in industrial cultivation, the PPTNDS could see use in the top layers of vertical farms, which can't be visited that often by growers. In education, teachers can use it to teach students about agriculture in a system that basically grows itself, and it could even be marketed as a novelty item to consumers, Jacob believes, using the slogan "Developed by NASA". NASA’s expertise in space and scientific exploration contributes to essential services provided to the American people by other federal agencies, such as weather forecasting and natural resource management. The agency freely shares this unique knowledge and works with institutions around the world.
If you're looking to get involved in the agricultural space race, you can participate in the Space Chile Challenge, to grow the hottest possible space pepper. Later this year, NASA will also open up the Lunar Nutrition Challenge, asking the public, academia and industry to develop and demonstrate food production systems suitable for future space exploration. Registration for that is expected to open in late 2020.
For more information:
NASA Technology Transfer Program
technology.nasa.gov
Publication date: Fri 26 Jun 2020
Author: Jan Jacob Mekes
© HortiDaily.com
Video: Interview with Christina Johnson from NASA Postdoctoral Program
Microgreens in Space
Plant Growth Research and Technologies Featured in Upcoming NASA Webinar
NASA’s webinar will feature researcher, Jacob Torres, who will discuss the latest food production research and technologies developed at NASA
The Veggie Lab at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center is a Plant Processing Area - a web of ground research laboratories equipped with plant growth chambers of all sizes and the ability to simulate the International Space Station environment. That along with a team of researchers capable of applying the chemistry, biology, microbiology, and engineering needed to make plants grow in space, makes NASA a one of a kind hub for fulfilling space biology and growing crops in space.
NASA’s webinar will feature researcher, Jacob Torres, who will discuss the latest food production research and technologies developed at NASA. These include a Passive Porous Plant Nutrient System that requires no electricity or moving parts, and a variety of micro-gravity simulation testing systems for plant growth. Also included will some video clips of Jacob inside the lab exhibiting some of his technologies and ongoing research projects.
The webinar will explain how NASA’s technologies and capabilities are available to industry and other organizations through NASA’s Technology Transfer Program. Also it will introduce NASA’s Centennial Challenge, a competitive program for teams to compete for funding to develop and demonstrate novel technologies, systems or approaches for sustainable advanced plant and food production for long duration deep space exploration missions.
“Before astronauts took that first historic bite of lettuce in space, every piece of equipment involved in growing that lettuce was designed and meticulously tested in the Veggie Lab and other labs at NASA. NASA continues to research methods to improve plant growth and plant nutrition in space”, Jacob Torres comments.
Register here for this free live webinar
June 23rd 2020 at 2:00 PM (EST)
To learn more about NASA’s Technology Transfer Program, please visit their website. You can also browse their entire technology portfolio here.
Publication date: Thu 21 May 2020
Purdue University Mechanical Engineering Technology Grad Developing Food Technology For NASA’s Mars Missions
A graduate student who gained experience growing plants for a Purdue Polytechnic research project is now helping NASA develop microgravity food production technology to sustain astronauts during long missions to Mars
August 19, 2019
NASA Technical and Horticultural Scientist Jacob Torres works in the water for microgravity test bed at the Kennedy Space Center’s Space Station Processing Facility in Merritt Island, Fla. Thanks to Torres’ suggestion, the Española chile pepper will be the first fruiting plant to be grown in space this November on the International Space Station. (Photo courtesy Jacob Torres)
A graduate student who gained experience growing plants for a Purdue Polytechnic research project is now helping NASA develop microgravity food production technology to sustain astronauts during long missions to Mars.
Jacob Torres graduated from Purdue in May 2018 with a master’s degree in mechanical engineering technology. During his studies, he worked on the Biowall, an eco-friendly air filtration system that can be used in residential buildings to improve air quality. That experience proved beneficial when he applied for an internship at Kennedy Space Center in Merritt Island, Florida.
“I did the application and never thought I’d hear anything back from them, straight up,” said Torres. “On the application, there just happened to be one line that said, ‘plant growth for food production in microgravity.’ I thought that was pretty cool and in my research at Purdue, I made a biowall, and it uses plants to filter indoor air.”
After that 10-week internship, NASA (the National Aeronautics and Space Administration) invited Torres to continue his work for an additional four months. In December 2018, his position as a technical and horticultural scientist became permanent.
Torres’ path to becoming a research scientist at NASA has been anything but traditional. He moved from New Mexico to Las Vegas immediately after graduating from high school, found a job at a restaurant and worked his way into a management position. A chance encounter with actors Bill Murray and Billy Crystal led to several years as manager of three of Murray’s restaurants in South Carolina and Florida.
“It was such a rough ride,” said Torres. “I told myself I couldn’t run restaurants for the rest of my life. I was like, ‘Is this all I have to do, is this as far as I could go?’ No way.”
Read the full Rio Grande Sun article.
NASA: First Fruit Grown In Space To Spice-Up Astronauts' Menu
Researchers at NASA are planning on sending a version of chile peppers in space to be grown and harvested at the International Space Station
Researchers at NASA are planning on sending a version of chile peppers in space to be grown and harvested at the International Space Station. The peppers, from Española in New Mexico, would be the first fruiting plant to be grown in space once it is sent to the ISS for testing in March 2020. The tests are a part of NASA's major plan to produce food outside Earth's atmosphere.
NASA researcher Jacob Torres, has stated that the point of the mission is to see if NASA's Advanced Plant Habitat-a bioscience research facility at ISS that recreates a plant's environmental needs (CO2, humidity, etc.) can grow fruiting crops. NASA has already successfully grown leafy crops at ISS.
Why a pepper?
The obvious question is, if you're sending a fruiting plant, why not send something more appetizing than a pepper? The answer is that not every crop can successfully grow in space and the Española Chile Pepper could just help pave the way for interstellar farming. The plant has already met NASA's needs for easily pollination and the ability to survive in high CO2 environments.
The Farms of The Future Were Built For Outer Space. Will They Work On Earth?
It will be years until NASA is ready for a journey to the red planet, but if Earth continues to suffer from climate change, Mars could come to us.
It will be years until NASA is ready for a journey to the red planet, but if Earth continues to suffer from climate change, Mars could come to us.
August 13, 2019
Visitors look at vegetables growing under artificial light on a vertical farm, in the IKEA: Gardening Will Save the World garden, in London on May 20th, 2019. (Photo: Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images)
On Mars, we'll all farm underground. Our crops will grow in a greenhouse, where large, parabolic mirrors focus the sun's weak rays and transmit them through fiber optic cables. We'll harvest vegetables to eat—but also the purified water that evaporates from their leaves. We'll all be vegan, because raising animals for food will be too expensive. And, most importantly, the plants will give us oxygen.
"That's the starting point to a whole civilization right there," says Utah State University researcher Bruce Bugbee. This is Bugbee's vision, one he's been dreaming of and testing and revising for years as a plant engineer with NASA.
Astronauts going to Mars can eat all the freeze-dried food they're able to ship, but if humans are going to survive on the planet they'll need to plants to produce oxygen. Not just any photosynthesizer will do: Mars is a difficult environment, with many challenges for farmers. Crops will need to be able to thrive in a small area, retain their nutrient content, and still taste good. Structures where they grow on the surface will need to withstand basketball-sized meteorites. The technology used to grow the plants will take massive amounts of energy. Mars also presents the ultimate recycling challenge, since astronauts can't pack all the water and nutrients they need on a two-and-a-half-year space flight.
Bugbee and his colleagues have been working on all these problems for decades, in a sometimes fantastical bid to support life on Mars (and, in the meantime, on space shuttles). Decades ago, NASA researchers ruled out some of the easiest plants to grow indoors, like algae: not enough sustenance, Bugbee says. Very tall crops like corn and sugarcane were also nixed because they wouldn't fit easily into the plant habitats.
What the astronauts really wanted was something green. "They say that having the texture and flavor and color and aromas of fresh foods apparently—and I believe it—really does add to the experience of eating," says NASA plant physiologist Raymond Wheeler.
Scientists started looking at traditional field crops like lettuce, tomatoes, and broccoli. Right now, astronauts are growing mixed greens 250 miles above Earth on the International Space Station, using two small, sealed greenhouse units called Veggie. NASA researchers have planned and adjusted and measured for everything—including which types of lettuce tastes best in space. Astronauts' clogged sinuses already make it so they "can't taste much of anything," according to Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, but the researchers are also curious to see whether the space environment affects a plant's flavor compounds and nutrient levels. Panels of specialists at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston typically conduct formal taste tests, but sometimes the researchers sample a leaf or two themselves.
What Bugbee and his team didn't expect is that the technology they created for this grandiose, futuristic mission would become somewhat eclipsed by those using it to farm on more familiar terrain.
In 2017, NASA commissioned a space farming project to figure out how to grow food on Mars, but they were also hoping to make some discoveries that could improve crop yields overall. The problems that space farmers of the future will face are similar to those already plaguing earthbound agriculture as climate change grows worse, including a dwindling water supply and poor soil. Now, researchers in Utah and three California universities—NASA's partners with the Center for the Utilization of Biological Engineering in Space—are working on projects that can sustain life not just on Mars, but on Earth.
"I think the reason NASA funds us is a powerful human fascination with being able to go inside a closed system and grow your own food," Bugbee says. "What if the atmosphere went bad and we had to build a big dome ... and go inside and live in it?"
In 1988, Wheeler built the first working vertical farm—growing plants on shelves, typically in a warehouse or storage container—at the agency's Kennedy Space Center. Wheeler's farm was 25 feet high and equipped with a hydroponic system for growing plants in water and high-pressure sodium lamps, the type commonly used for street lighting. All together, it was 20 square meters of growing space—almost 90,000 times less than the size of the average outdoor United States farm. According to Wheeler's calculations, it would take 50 square meters of plants to provide enough food and oxygen—and remove enough carbon dioxide—for one human in space. (Astronauts won't be using sodium lamps, though: A few years after Wheeler's innovation, a different group of NASA-funded researchers patented another significant piece of technology to indoor farmers: LEDs, which require much less electricity than sodium lights and are now used to power most greenhouses.)
Wheeler was focused on optimizing the area inside a chamber aboard a NASA space shuttle—and up seemed like the best way to go. "One of the things you have to think about in space is volume efficiency," he says. "You're vertically and dimensionally constrained." The team had to pick shorter crops: wheat, soybeans, potatoes, lettuce, and tomatoes.
In space, resources are limited: NASA scientists have to extract and reuse the nutrients from excess plant material and human waste; they collect water from the condensation that collects in the closed chambers. Here on Earth, water is also growing increasingly precious—climate change will make droughts more frequent and severe, devastating crop yields and making some staple crops like corn and soybeans obsolete. Every day, Earth looks a little more desolate, a little more like Mars.
When Wheeler started, the term "vertical farming" didn't exist yet. Today it's a $10 billion industry attracting interest from Silicon Valley and start-ups all over the world. Its acolytes believe the technology will one day completely replace conventional field agriculture, allowing businesses to grow crops year-round and indoors, insulated from the next drought or flood and the effects of climate change. "People imagine that we'll grow everything indoors, in skyscrapers in the middle of Manhattan," Bugbee says. "It's a wildly popular idea."
Sonio Lo, the chief executive officer of the biggest vertical farming company in the world, Crop One Holdings, says she believes vertical farming can "liberate agriculture from climate change and geography."
Crop One broke ground on the world's largest vertical farm last November in Dubai: a five-story, 130,000-square-feet warehouse, capable of producing three tons of leafy greens a day. The company is also growing chard, arugula, and other greens in large, sealed rooms—year-round. "I made my whole management team stand in the supermarket and give out samples of what we were growing in the middle of the Boston winter," Lo says.
Soon people across the U.S. can try it too. Crop One is building new farms in the northeast, southwest, and California, where it will grow food to sell through its FreshBox Farms brand.
While researchers have been quick to condemn vertical farming's promises as over-hyped, even the industry's greatest critics acknowledge that this approach eliminates some of the challenges with conventional agriculture: Since vertical farms are located in compact warehouses, they're often located much closer to their markets than, say, the corn belt is to a city, allowing producers to cut down on food waste and save on transportation costs—a major contributor to U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.
The lettuce grows in a controlled environment, free of pests and pathogens, meaning farmers can grow food without pesticides or herbicides, which have a massive environmental and human-health cost. Vertical farmers can also recycle their nutrients—like astronauts do in space—preventing phosphorus or nitrogen from flooding into the world's waterways and wreaking havoc with algal blooms. And indoor growth systems can be very productive: When all the conditions are right, researchers have surpassed record crop yields in the field by as much as six times.
Lo says that a vertical farm using 100 percent renewables has one-tenth of the carbon impact of a conventional farm. But few companies have reached this goal; most are still moving toward a combination of renewable energy and non-renewables to power the electric lights used to grow the plants. It takes a lot of land to generate that much solar—about five acres of solar panels to supply the light for just one acre of indoor farm, Bugbee estimates. That's why many have resorted to fossil fuels, breaking one of vertical farming's great promises. "It takes massive amounts of fossil fuel energy, so, environmentally, it's really a disaster," Bugbee says. "Those people have used many of the principles that we've developed through NASA."
Bugbee's current project could help with that. His lab at Utah State is using LEDs and fiber optics to grow plants under different types of lights, with different ratios of colors—ultra violet, blue, green, red, far red (out of the limit of human vision)—to manipulate both photosynthesis and plant shape. The goal, he says, is to find "the most efficient system possible." Right now, the technology is too expensive: millions of dollars to light one building. But eventually, he believes fiber optics will replace electric lights for good.
But there are other qualms with vertical farming: Instead of helping to colonize space—the future that Mars researchers envision for their technology—vertical farms might take over city real estate, at a time when housing costs are extremely high. In some countries and some industries, it already has: Japan has had flourishing plant factories for the last 10 years. The fledgling cannabis industry has also started to ramp up its indoor production, poised to become even more profitable.
Lo says it won't be long until greens grown indoors cost the same as those in the field. "Field-grown food will continue to rise in cost, and course the climate is also changing," she says. "From a cost perspective, vertical farming will become competitive very quickly."
Others are more skeptical: "Economically, will they succeed? That question is still ongoing, because they always have to compete with field agriculture," Wheeler says. "What's their cost to pay for electric power? What are their labor costs? Are these operations sustainable? All of this is sort of a living experiment right now."
Technology for farming in climate change may be a by-product of NASA's research, but it has helped the agency ensure funding for its work in space. In response to the skeptic who doubts whether it's worth figuring out how to farm for a Mars mission we might never see, one only has to point to vertical farms in Boston or Seattle that already use some of NASA's innovations.
But Bugbee believes these earthly pursuits can be just as futuristic (or deluded) as those meant for space. "People that do it say they're going to save the planet ... but they have to have a lot of fossil fuels," he says. "It'll tell you all kinds of rosy pictures about it—that it saves water, it saves fertilizer."
He's not quite comfortable with his research being used to prop up this industry, now flooded with billions of dollars of venture capital. "I'm not doing it to make this more possible on Earth," he says. "We get asked all the time about the spinoffs: Could you do this, could you do that."
We may never make it to Mars. It will be years until NASA is ready for a journey to the red planet, and many more until Bugbee would be able to build his greenhouse underground, tucked away from meteorites. But if Earth continues on this collision course, Mars could come to us.
TAGS CLIMATE CHANGE VERTICAL FARMING NASA OUTER SPACE PLANTS AGRICULTURE
BY EMILY MOON
Emily Moon is a staff writer at Pacific Standard. Previously she worked at the Chicago Sun-Times and the Herald-Times in Bloomington, Indiana. She is a graduate of Northwestern University.
One Giant Leap: Space Programs Spin Off Vertical Farming, by Joel L. Cuello, Ph.D.
The author's NASA-sponsored project on design and demonstration of NASA’s first Hybrid Solar and Electric Lighting System for Bioregenerative Space Life Support for application in future long-duration manned missions to the Moon and Mars
The vertical farming industry will likely in
turn ultimately enable NASA
and other space programs
to realize their future food production
systems on the Moon, Mars and even beyond.
Original Content Written for The Association for Vertical Farming
NASA's Apollo 11 Lunar landing and moonwalk on 20 July 1962. (Photos courtesy of NASA)
As the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11's first Lunar landing and moonwalk on 20 July 1969 is observed this year, it is fitting to recall the myriad innovation spinoffs that NASA's space program had gifted mankind, ranging from the integrated circuit to computer microchips to satellite television to cordless tools to electric vehicles to freeze-dried food to memory foam, etc. -- and yes, still unbeknown to many, vertical farming.
The author's NASA-sponsored project on design and demonstration of NASA’s first Hybrid Solar and Electric Lighting System for Bioregenerative Space Life Support for application in future long-duration manned missions to the Moon and Mars.
While the Apollo program itself did not initiate or develop space farming, its unprecedented success directly led NASA to establish around 1978 the Controlled Ecological Life Support System (CELSS) division within its Advanced Life Support program with the aim in part of developing the technologies and strategies necessary to grow food and regenerate resources on the Lunar surface or on Mars for future long-duration manned missions and habitation.
Nearly two decades before NASA, however, the then Soviet Space program commenced activities beginning in 1961 toward developing its own bioregenerative space life support system. In 1968, the Soviets first realized growing crops in their completely sealed controlled-environment system Bios-2, located in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, wherein they successfully cultivated wheat, carrots, cucumber, dill and other vegetable crops. (Bios-2 should not be confused with Biosphere 2 in Arizona which was constructed much later between 1987 and 1991.) An improved underground test facility, Bios-3, was subsequently built by the Soviets in 1972.
Fast forward to the 1980's and 1990's, NASA's CELSS program made significant advances in the cultivation of a whole range of crops in closed controlled-environment systems under optimized environmental conditions of lighting, temperature, relative humidity, air flow, nutrient compositions, etc.
The foregoing advances by both NASA and the Soviet Space program paved the way for the emergence of the first commercial vertical farms (or plant factories) in the United States and Japan. General Electric's Geniponics based in New York and Alaska as well as General Mills' Phytofarms of America in Illinois were established in the 1970's and operated through the 1980's, though eventually closing down owing to economic challenges.
It was in Japan in the 1980's, however, when the then fledgling vertical farming industry truly took root and flourished in part through their proactive adoption and incorporation of emerging technology innovations. For instance, TS Farm (Q.P. Corporation) was first in employing aeroponic systems, while Cosmo Plant Co. Ltd. in 2000 became the world's first commercial LED-based vertical farm and began producing up to 7,000 heads of lettuce per day, significantly exceeding the industry norm of 3,000 to 5,000 heads of lettuce per day in the 1990's.
Vertical farming today, of course, has gone global and, in parallel with advances in lighting technologies, climate control, data analytics, automation and other innovations, has correspondingly been setting new achievements in both yield and resource sustainability.
And just as the space program spun off the Vertical Farming industry, there is poetic symmetry in the very real prospects that it will be the vertical farming industry that will ultimately enable NASA, as well as other space programs, to develop and fully realize its bioregenerative space life support systems for future Lunar and Martian human habitats.
Just as Elon Musk's Space X, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic have partnered with NASA to innovate on and advance space transportation, it is highly likely that partnerships with NASA for the design and operation of its future Lunar and Martian space farms will be brokered with the likes of AeroFarms, Plenty, Bowery Farming, CropOne Holdings, Gotham Greens, Infarm, AEssense and/or other vertical farming companies, some of which have yet to be formed.
In the future the vertical farming industry may indeed extend its prospects from the mere terrestrial to the extraterrestrial.
_________________________
Prof. Joel Cuello is Vice Chair of the Association for Vertical Farming (AVF) and Professor of Biosystems Engineering at The University of Arizona. He conducted his U.S. National Research Council postdoctoral research fellowship at NASA John F. Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida in 1994.
Email cuelloj@email.arizona.edu
NASA Project Proves The New Mexico Chile Is Out of This World
A team of scientists at NASA is working to launch the Española chile pepper into space. This would be the first fruiting plant the United States has grown and harvested at the International Space Station
July 14, 2019
BY KAREN GRAHAM
A team of scientists at NASA is working to launch the Española chile pepper into space. This would be the first fruiting plant the United States has grown and harvested at the International Space Station.
New Mexico chili peppers were grown in 3-gallon pots in the Ghosh Grove, Rockledge, Florida, USA from seeds bought from the Chili Pepper Institute, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, New Mexico,
Asit K. Ghosh Thaumaturgist (CC BY-SA 3.0)
One of the issues over long-term space missions is how to supply the needed food for the trip. Free-dried food can take up a lot of space and weight on an extended voyage and won't be that tasty. Back in the early 2000s,
NASA began exploring ways to supplement astronauts’ diets with plants that can be grown in space or on other worlds.NASA began by experimenting with growing seeds in simulated space environments here on Earth. With improved technologies, NASA is now learning to grow vegetables and fruits on the International Space Station (ISS). But it's not easy growing plants with less gravity than is found on Earth.
Seeds tend to move around in zero-gravity and water clumps up. Remember, you can't pour a glass of water in space. There is also the need to be frugal when it comes to space - we mean the size of the garden
ASA Image: ISS021-E-006274 A close-up view of the Cell Biology Experiment Facility (CBEF) SPACE SEED experiment is featured in this image photographed by an Expedition 21 crew member in the Kibo laboratory on the International Space Station. ISS021-E-006274 A close-up view of the Cell Biology Experiment Facility (CBEF) SPACE SEED experiment is featured in this image photographed by an Expedition 21 crew member in the Kibo laboratory on the International Space Station. NASA
Differences in lighting, temperature and even the medium used to grow the seeds had to be tested. And because of the weight of soil, NASA has been looking at methods like hydroponics and aeroponics. Hydroponics involves delivering water and nutrients to plant roots using liquid solutions, and with aeroponics, plants are grown in a misty air environment.
The first edible veggie is grown in space
The first portable growing box for space, equipped with LED lights, called Veggie, was tested at the orbiting outpost in 2014. After a few problems were worked out, astronauts got their first taste of NASA-approved space-grown lettuce in 2015. Now, there are two Veggie boxes and a third called the Advanced Plant Habitat.
A picture of Tokyo Bekana Chinese cabbage growing in a NASA Veggie unit. Image dated February 17, 2017.ISS Expedition 50 member
Since NASA's first attempts using the Veggie, a number of green leafy vegetables, as well as zinnias and a sunflower, have been grown successfully on the ISS. In 2018 the Veggie-3 experiment was tested with plant pillows and root mats. One of the goals is to grow food for crew consumption. Crops tested at this time include cabbage, lettuce, and mizuna.
Today, fruits and vegetables that can be safely stored at room temperature are eaten on space flights. Astronauts also have a greater variety of main courses to choose from, and many request personalized menus from lists of available foods including items like fruit salad and spaghetti.
But even with all the variety of foods available for bringing on board the ISS, there is still the need for growing vegetables and fruits on space flights. And now that we are getting good at growing green, leafy vegetables, it was time to experiment with growing a fruiting plant.
Assorted bags of snack food and dehydrated food, as served on the ISS.NASA
The New Mexico Chile
Jacob Torres is part of a team of 20 people at NASA in Florida, working on a way to grow vegetables on board the ISS. Torres is originally from the Espanola Valley in New Mexico. When Torres arrived at NASA in 2018 for an internship, scientists were exploring the possibility of growing Hatch peppers, a New Mexico chile.
Torres suggested that NASA look at the state's Española pepper instead. There was a good reason for the suggestion. Hatch peppers are grown in the deserts of New Mexico, while the Española pepper grows at higher elevations and has a shorter growth period. Tosses thought they would be better for growing in space.
After experimenting with growing the Española peppers here on Earth under simulated space conditions, the little peppers are ready to be sent off to the ISS sometime between November and January 2020. If successful, the Española pepper would be the first fruiting plant - a flowering plant that grows a seed pod to procreate -- to be grown at the International Space Station
New Mexico chiles dried on the plant in Mesilla, New Mexico, 2016.Dicklyon
.“What an honor, what a privilege, and what a great way to represent the Espanola Valley,” said Victor Romero from the Espanola Valley Chamber of Commerce. Locals are thrilled with the publicity. “I think it’s going to open a lot of doors, you know? Hopefully, it grows there in space, and I think everyone will jump into the growing of the chile,” said chile farmer Fidel Martinez.
The española is an old chile pepper, has a slightly stronger pungent and bitter flavor and matures early to red, first grown by the Spanish settlers in the San Juan Valley, near modern-day Española, New Mexico. The Española Improved is a hybrid of the Sandia and Española, and provides Española's taste and early maturation, with a better yield, and larger peppers.
More about nasa, espaola pepper, fruiting plants, new mexico chile, international space station
NASA Testing Method To Grow Bigger Plants In Space
In an effort to increase the ability to provide astronauts nutrients on long-duration missions as the agency plans to sustainably return to the Moon and move forward to Mars, the Veg-PONDS-02 experiment is currently underway aboard the International Space Station
In an effort to increase the ability to provide astronauts nutrients on long-duration missions as the agency plans to sustainably return to the Moon and move forward to Mars, the Veg-PONDS-02 experiment is currently underway aboard the International Space Station.
The present method of growing plants in space uses seed bags, referred to as pillows, that astronauts push water into with a syringe. Using this method makes it difficult to grow certain types of “pick and eat” crops beyond lettuce varieties. Crops like tomatoes use a large amount of water, and pillows don’t have enough holding capacity to support them.
As an alternative to the pillows, 12 passive orbital nutrient delivery system (PONDS) plant growth units are being put through their paces. The PONDS units are less expensive to produce, have more water holding capacity, provide a greater space for root growth and are a completely passive system—meaning PONDS can provide air and water to crops without extra power.
The 21-day experiment is a collaboration between NASA, Techshot, Inc., the Tupperware Brands Corporation, fluids experts at NASA’s Glenn Research Center and Mark Weislogel at Portland State University. As a U.S. National Laboratory, the space station provides commercial companies and government agencies with the ability to test the experiment in a microgravity environment.
NASA astronaut Christina Koch initiates the Veg-PONDS-02 experiment on the International Space Station within Veggie by filling the upper reservoir on April 25, 2019. Credits: NASA/David Saint-Jacques
“There comes a point where you have longer and longer duration missions, and you reach a cost benefit point where it makes sense to grow your own food,” said Howard Levine, chief scientist of NASA’s Utilization and Life Sciences Office at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center.
After Levine developed the PONDS prototype, it was passed on to Dave Reed, Techshot’s Florida operations director, and his team to re-engineer and make it capable of withstanding spaceflight. PONDS tested well on the ground, but when the system first arrived at the space station last year for testing in a microgravity environment, it pumped too much water to the lettuce seeds.
The Veg-PONDS-02 experiment sits in the International Space Station's two Veggie chambers. The 21-day experiment consists of 12 plant growth units in three different design configurations available for testing. Credits: NASA/Christina Koch
“We took a step back, evaluated different aspects of the design, and together with water fluid experts from NASA, we came up with three alternative designs, each of which had a number of components we wanted to test in space,” said Levine.
On April 19, 2019, the Veg-PONDS-02 payload arrived at the orbiting laboratory via Northrop Grumman’s 11th Commercial Resupply mission, containing 12 PONDS units in the three new design configurations. Six of the units have a clear design to allow researchers to observe the performance of water in the units during the experiment. All units contain red romaine lettuce seeds and have been placed in the two space station vegetable production systems, known as Veggie, to test growth performance.
NASA astronaut Christina Koch initiated the experiment by filling the upper reservoir on April 25. Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronaut David Saint-Jacques filled the PONDS unit lower reservoir on May 2 and documented how water behaved in the system.
Reed and his team worked closely with material scientists and mechanical engineers with Tupperware to design and mold components that make up the PONDS-02 units.
“We needed something that was molded well, molded precisely and molded out of plastics that were compatible with edible material,” said Reed. “They brought all this huge body of knowledge to us.”
This experiment is a way to test the performance of the three alternative design methods in space to see if the water management issue initially discovered during the first PONDS experiment has been adequately addressed.
“I look at this as a normal part of the process,” said David Brady, assistant program scientist in the International Space Station Program Science Office at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. “You find what works and what doesn’t work, and you adapt and change it. The fact that Howard and his team have been able to do that is progress.”
On May 16, the final day of the experiment, the plants will be harvested. Six of the PONDS units will be returned to Earth on SpaceX’s 17th Commercial Resupply Services mission for further analysis. Reed’s team will take the successful components and combine them into one final PONDS design, which will pave the way for the agency to truly begin testing the growth capability of crop varieties beyond leafy greens.
“PONDS was an opportunity to do something that no one else has done before,” said Reed. “People have been growing plants in space since the Apollo era, but not like this.”
The Space Life and Physical Sciences Research and Applications Division (SLPSRA) of NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington is sponsoring the Veg-PONDS-02 investigation as part of its mission to conduct research that enables human spaceflight exploration.
Source: NASA (Danielle Sempsrott)
Student Design for Space Colony Greenhouse Wins NASA Praise
Student-designed inflatable dome folds and collapses for transport, racks plants vertically.
IMAGE COURTESY OF DARTMOUTH THAYER SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING
May 8, 2019
A radiation-shielded, inflatable greenhouse with a hydroponic growing system designed by undergraduate students at Dartmouth College’s Thayer School of Engineering could sustain four astronauts on a 600-day mission to Mars as soon as 2030.
The students’ Deployable, Enclosed Martian Environment for Technology, Eating and Recreation (DEMETER) concept—the acronym is also the name of the Greek goddess of the harvest—won first place in the 2019 NASA Breakthrough, Innovative and Game Changing (BIG) Idea Challenge, the agency announced on April 24.
The team pitched their idea to scientists at NASA and the National Institute of Aerospace (NIA) in competition with four other finalist teams.
NASA and NIA are seeking innovative ideas for the design, installation and sustainable operation of a habitat-sized Mars greenhouse, with the primary purpose of food production, according to NASA. The agency says an efficient and safe greenhouse design could assist with Mars missions and long-term lunar missions.
The 8-meter-high by 16-m-wide DEMETER includes an automated hydroponic growing system that uses a 3-m-tall cylinder inside of a torus, with the cylinder storing the water and nutrient delivery and recycling systems. A running track for astronaut recreation circles the vertically integrated assembly of growing trays.
The team used a 1⁄6-scale prototype to show folding methods for 1.5-m-long hydroponic growing trays, which nest against the central cylinder during transport. It also tested growing crops in a nutrient film technique hydroponic system to refine their design.
Dartmouth edged ahead when scored on the completeness of the proposed design, low system mass, optimization for food production and design simplicity, says Kevin Kempton, NASA program element manager and one of seven judges.
The team used “top-notch systems engineering throughout,” Kempton says. “That began with a systems overview that identified their system of interest relative to external systems, such as sunlight, heat, and water in the Martian environment.”
Kempton says another strength is that the components all appear relatively low risk and are based largely on a habitat design developed in a 2017 NASA feasibility study, which was the basis for the competition. “The team estimates it would take three to four missions to become a cost-effective option,” versus the cost of transporting food from Earth, Kempton says.
The team also scored high marks for innovation for the proposed concept of operations and for system deployment, which begins with robotic transport of the packaged greenhouse payload from the landing site to the deployment site. The design “seemed to have the highest level of technical maturity and it would likely require less technology development effort to get a DEMETER-base design up and running for the initial Martian outpost,” Kempton says.
NASA plans to send astronauts to the moon by 2024, with future missions in the 2030s, when a Mars greenhouse concept would potentially be viable, says Drew Hope, NASA program manager.
MIT placed second for its Biosphere Engineered Architecture for Viable Extraterrestrial Residence (BEAVER) concept. Plans include a spiral hydroponic design track in a multilevel facility featuring an enclosed waterfall for astronaut relaxation. Other finalists included designs from three state universities, California Davis, Colorado Boulder and Michigan Ann Arbor.
The finalist teams receive a shot at five NASA internships, recognition and a $6,000 stipend to travel to NASA’s Langley, Va., research center to present. All original ideas and concepts are credited to the student teams, but NASA has the option to take any portion of the ideas for use in future NASA mission planning, Hope says.
KEYWORDS Greenhouse /Hydroponic / Mars / NASA /Space Colony
Tomatoes And Microgreens In Space
We Have Lift-Off
Originally scheduled for November 19, the Eu:CROPIS mission, featuring life support system greenhouses that are to demonstrate that growing tomatoes in space is possible using urine, was launched December 3 and is now in orbit.
In other space news, December 5 will see another satellite launch, this time from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Space Tango customer payloads will be making their departure for the International Space Station for the SpaceX Commercial Resupply Services-16 (CRS-16) mission. Included in the mission are two horticulture projects.
„Test of outside cameras and Payload No.4 (SCORE) successfully accomplished. The images show the inside view of the non-deployed solar panels”
#SSOA #SmallSatExpress @DLR_de @UniFAU @SpaceX @elonmusk @DLRWeaselWorks @Lizzard07 @nohka @SpaceflightInc @DLR_next
Aeroponic Farming in Microgravity
The Aeroponic Farming in Microgravity payload will evaluate an aeroponic system designed for use in a microgravity environment. The primary payload objective is observing the behavior of mist immediately after it is ejected from its source and how it moves thereafter. The secondary objective is to observe how a sample plant grows using the aeroponic system.
In order to examine the feasibility of using small-scale aeroponics systems in microgravity, this experiment features a chamber with an ultrasonic fogger unit. The mist is sprayed onto material containing microgreen seeds and the resulting germination and growth are imaged. Research data collected should provide a helpful model for future plant growth studies on the ISS.
Growth of Assorted Microgreens in Microgravity
The Growth of Assorted Microgreens in Microgravity payload studies the morphology and physiology of the germination of four different microgreens within modular growth chambers in microgravity.
The seeds are placed under automatic growth lighting conditions to provide day and night lighting cycles that simulate successful terrestrial lighting. While imaging and numerous environmental sensors provide an incremental evaluation of the plant growth on the International Space Station, multiple terrestrial control experiments will be conducted for comparison.
The Growth of Assorted Microgreens in Microgravity experiment demonstrates modular, autonomous and retrievable crop research in space by contributing to the understanding of plant cultivation in service of food, oxygen and other habitat requirements on long-term space missions. This experiment also provides insight on plants grown under unusual conditions and can inform crop science, basic biology and horticultural applications on Earth.
Publication date : 12/5/2018
NASA Technology To Grow Crops Faster
NASA has created a new technology to grow crops on other planets with the prospect of establishing colonies on Mars or another planet in the future. A group of scientists from the John Innes Center, the Earlham Institute, the Quadram Institute in the United Kingdom, and the University of Queensland have tested the application of this technology in terrestrial crops.
They have applied the new technology in a greenhouse at the John Innes Center in Norwick (United Kingdom). Researchers conducted rapid genetic improvements using shorter crop growth and harvest cycles, in addition to improved LED lighting. The research, which was published in the scientific journal Nature Protocols, shows that this method of cultivation can produce crops that are resistant to diseases, climate challenges, and that are more nutritious to feed a growing world population.
This technique uses improved LED illumination and day regimes of up to 22 hours to optimize photosynthesis and promote rapid crop growth. It accelerates the plants reproduction cycle: for example, it allows producers to grow six crops of wheat in a year, well above the two crops per year that are achieved with traditional improved farming methods.
By shortening breeding cycles, the method allows scientists and plant breeders to make accelerated genetic improvements, such as increasing yields, disease resistance and tolerance to climate change in a variety of crops, such as wheat, barley, rapeseed, and pea.
Source: lavanguardia.com
Publication date : 11/29/2018
NASA Awards UbiQD Contract To Develop Greenhouse Films For Space Missions
PRESS RELEASE PR Newswire
Aug. 13, 2018
LOS ALAMOS, N.M., Aug. 13, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- UbiQD, Inc., a New Mexico-based nanotechnology development company, announced today that it has been awarded a Small Business Technology Transfer Program (STTR) Phase I contract by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The contract will provide funding for UbiQD's collaborative research and development with the University of Arizona to explore using quantum dots (QDs) to tailor the spectrum of sunlight for optimized crop growth for in-space and planetary exploration missions.
"We are excited to be working with UbiQD to explore this innovative approach in managing wavelengths of light from light source to plant leaf within a food plant production application," said Dr. Gene Giacomelli, professor in the Department of Biosystems Engineering Department and the Controlled Environment Agriculture Center at the University of Arizona. "This technology has the potential to improve the PAR light source efficiency, thereby becoming a game-changer for indoor crop production."
UbiQD has quietly been developing its QD agriculture films after receiving funding from Breakout Labs in 2017 to explore the concept. The company is now aiming to launch a retrofit version of its film product in late 2018 under the UbiGro™ brand. The UbiGro™ Film is designed to promote vegetable production and accelerate plant growth.
"With NASA's support we will work with the University of Arizona controlled Environment Agriculture Center in their College of Agriculture and Life Sciences to evaluate our quantum dot agriculture films for improved lettuce production," said Dr. Matt Bergren, Chief of Product at UbiQD and Principal Investigator for the project. "We have already been testing the films, in both research and commercial greenhouses in the U.S., and we've seen yield improvements for tomatoes on the order of 20-30 percent."
About UbiQD, Inc.
UbiQD is a nanotechnology company based in Los Alamos, New Mexico that manufactures high-performance cadmium-free quantum dots and composite materials. The company uniquely focuses on applications that utilize its nanomaterials to manipulate sunlight, enabling solar windows and spectrum-controlled greenhouses. Spun out of technology developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Washington, and Western Washington University, UbiQD envisions a future where quantum dots are ubiquitous in a wide spectrum of applications. For more information visit UbiQD.com and UbiGro.com.
About University of Arizona Controlled Environment Agriculture Center
The Mission of the Controlled Environment Agriculture Center (UA-CEAC) is to develop economically, environmentally and socially sustainable agricultural systems that will provide food of high quality for helping to feed the world. Engineers and scientists focus on CEA production agricultural practices within greenhouse, growth rooms and vertical farms to provide the desired aerial environment and the necessary root zone environment using hydroponic production techniques. Resource use efficiency of water, energy and plant nutrients are improved within automated systems.
About NASA STTR Program
The NASA STTR program is sponsored by its Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) and managed at NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley. STMD is responsible for developing the cross-cutting, pioneering, new technologies and capabilities needed by the agency to achieve its current and future missions. For more information about the SBIR/STTR program, including the selection list, visit sbir.nasa.gov/. To learn more about the other missions and programs NASA's Kennedy Space Center supports, visit www.nasa.gov/kennedy.
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SOURCE UbiQD, Inc.
NASA Is Learning The Best Way To Grow Food In Space
Can gardens help astronauts go farther?
By Sarah Scoles June 6, 2018
“Our plants aren’t looking too good,” astronaut Scott Kelly tweeted from the International Space Station on December 27, 2015. He was right: The attached picture showed four baby zinnias bathed in magenta light. Three of the four leafy stalks were discolored and curling in on themselves. The station’s garden was struggling to recover from a mold problem. It’s an issue familiar to terrestrial gardeners. And while on Earth, the problem means a trip to the local nursery for replacements, in space you can’t do that.
Space gardens will be essential someday if astronauts are to go beyond low-earth orbit or make more than a quick trip to the moon. They can't carry all the food they need.
The Voorhes
The zinnias, brightly colored flowers in the daisy family, were part of an experiment called Veggie, whose ultimate mission is to provide crews with a long-term source of food. In prior tests, astronauts had successfully harvested lettuce. The zinnias had a longer growth period—60 to 80 days—and then would bloom, producing neon-hued blossoms that look like they belong in a psychedelic corsage. They were practice for something finickier and tastier than leafy greens: tomatoes. If station crews were ever going to grow something that intricate, they needed to figure out—among other things— how to vanquish mold.
Veggie is a relatively uncomplicated way for astronauts to develop their green thumbs. “It’s a very simple system,” says Gioia Massa, one of the project’s lead scientists. “It doesn’t control much at all.” Instead, the humans do.
Space gardening will be essential someday if space travelers are to go beyond low-Earth orbit or make more than a quick trip to the moon. They can’t carry on all the food they need, and the rations they do bring will lose nutrients. So astronauts will need a replenishable stash, with extra vitamins. They’ll also require ways to make more oxygen, recycle waste, and help them not miss home so much. Space gardens can, theoretically, help accomplish all of that.
Veggie and other systems aboard the space station are helping researchers figure out how radiation and lack of gravity affect plants, how much water is Goldilocks-good, and how to deal with deplorables like mold. Just as important, scientists are learning how much work astronauts have to put in, how much work they want to put in, and how plants nourish their brains as well as their bodies.
For all its potential importance, Veggie is pretty compact. It weighs 41 pounds, just a hair less than the station’s 44-pound coffeemaker. The top—an off-white rectangular box that houses the grow lights—resembles an old VCR. From this, a curtain of clear plastic hangs to encase the 1.7-square-foot planting surface. Astronauts preset how long the lights stay on each day; how brightly they emit red light to optimize photosynthesis, and blue light to control the plants’ form and function. They can also activate a built-in fan to adjust the humidity.
The most important part of Veggie, though, is the fragile bounty it is meant to cultivate. That begins as seeds encased in little Teflon- coated Kevlar pouches. The scientists call them plant pillows. “You can think of it like a grow bag,” Massa says of these packets stuffed with seeds, water wicks, fertilizer, and soil.
People have anticipated this scenario for more than a century. In 1880, science-fiction author Percy Greg wrote Across the Zodiac, a novel about an astronaut who traveled to Mars with plants to recycle waste. Fifteen years later, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, a Russian rocket scientist, wrote Dreams of Earth and Sky, which laid out how spacefarers and flora could live together inside a closed system.
In the 1950s, green things burst from book covers and into the lab. NASA and the U.S. Air Force started growing algae to see if it could help with life support (turns out, it tasted bad, was full of indigestible cell walls, and had too much protein). Then, Soviet scientists experimented with nearly self-sufficient ecosystems in which humans survived on oxygen, water, and nutrition produced mostly within an enclosed habitat.
In the longest run, a 180-day trial inside a facility called BIOS-3, an earthbound crew got 80 percent of its food from its own wheat and vegetables. Finally, in 1982, plants in space became a reality when Soviet cosmonauts grew Arabidopsis thaliana, a flowering species related to cabbage and mustard, to maturity aboard their Salyut 7 space station. The yield was too small to be a source of food.
Liquid refreshment
Astronauts dispense precise amounts of water to the plants inside Veggie.
NASA
Around this time, in the mid-’80s, Veggie’s Massa was in middle school, and her seventh- grade teacher returned from an astroagriculture workshop at Kennedy Space Center with reams of information on the topic. Inspired, a teenage Massa kept taking ag classes as she moved on to high school, and later teamed up with her middle-school mentor for a hydroponics project.
While Massa continued her studies and self-guided experimentation, NASA began building orbital plant-growing apparatus, most notably the Biomass Production System. Designed to be used for experiments on the space station, it was a rectangle with sides each about the length of an arm. Four cube-shaped growth chambers rested like safes inside. Designed by scientists at a Wisconsin-based company, Orbitec, the Biomass Production System joined the space station in 2001. There, Brassica rapa field mustard soon sprouted tall, illuminated by plain white fluorescent light.
When researchers compared the harvest to a control plant on the ground, though, they found that the space mustard had more bacteria and fungus. “The significance of the difference is uncertain,” states NASA’s official conclusion. By which the agency meant it didn’t know why the microbes proliferated, not that their presence wasn’t important. In fact, as Veggie’s mold would show, it was critically important.
NASA retired the Biomass Production System in 2002, but Russian cosmonauts picked up where the U.S. left off. Over the decade, they successfully grew dwarf wheat, leafy mizuna, and dwarf peas. Bonus: In four successive generations of orbiting dwarf peas, the vegetables didn’t show signs of genetic messiness.
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Meanwhile Orbitec, in consultation with NASA, cultivated another plant-growing instrument. So when NASA awarded a grant in 2012 for a new space garden, the company had something to show for itself: Veggie, which, unlike its predecessor, was meant to produce food on an edible scale. Massa, by then a postdoc, tested different types of media and crops for the plant pillows. It was the kind of tinkering she’d been preparing for since she was 12. The United States’ first real space garden launched in 2014, not long after Massa advanced from her postdoc to become a Veggie project scientist at the space agency.
All went pretty well for Veggie until the flower flap. Most of its initial edible plants—a lettuce variety called Outredgeous—sprouted as they should have in 2014, and the astronauts shot them back down to Earth for testing. Massa says they’re still working on all the analyses. “But in general, the plants are pretty similar to our ground samples.” When they’re finished, they’ll know about chemical contents like antioxidants, anthocyanin (pigments), and phenolics, which protect plants against stress. Short term, the priority was mealtime: Could we have consumed the harvest? The crew, Massa, and NASA all wanted to know. Yes, it turned out, the produce was microbially safe to eat.
Kevlar-coated pouches help protect seeds from microbial contamination; fully grown Outredgeous lettuce
NASA
Still, when the astronauts planted a second set of seeds, in summer 2015, Massa ran into a new challenge: With harvest approaching, NASA had no protocol to approve the crew chowing down on the leaves of their labor. “We said, ‘We have only 28 days, and then they’re going to have to eat it,’” Massa recalls. With the clock ticking, management found a way to officially add the lettuce to the astronauts’ diet.
On August 9, Kelly snapped a picture, standing in front of the unfurling greens. His brow was furrowed, faux-serious. “Tomorrow we’ll eat the anticipated veggie harvest on @space_station!” he tweeted. “But first, lettuce take a #selfie.” Soon he crunched the harvest live on NASA TV. It might seem like no big deal, but a single leaf can make a big difference to someone who’s been eating rehydrated fare for months. During a later harvest, astronaut Peggy Whitson would use them to wrap a reconstituted lobster salad. “Even with a really good diet with hundreds of items, there’s dietary fatigue,” Massa says. “People get bored. Adding a new flavor or texture—like something crisp and juicy—could spice up your regular meal.”
That’s not the only brain boost. Sure, astronauts can gaze down at Earth and see its most beautiful spots—literally all of them—every 90 minutes. But those places are always out of reach, reminders of how far away sea level is. Having something nearby that photosynthesizes might cheer the crew. “It’s the psychological aspect of something green and growing when you’re far away from home,” Massa says.
In the next growing cycle, the astronauts fostered the ill-fated zinnias. About two weeks in, Kjell Lindgren saw the first warning signs. Water leaked from the wicks that hold the seeds. Then moisture began seeping from the infant leaves, which started to curl in on themselves. Veggie staff on the ground, in charge of the operation, decided it was time to turn the airflow fan from low to high. But an impromptu spacewalk to fix a broken robotic arm delayed the change because, in space, nothing is as simple as flicking a switch on your way out of the spaceship. While reprogramming Veggie’s settings takes only about 15 minutes, NASA prefers astronauts move anything lower priority out of the way when they have a high-priority task.
And then the leaves started to die.
That’s bad enough on its own. But, worse, dying vegetation can be a breeding ground for mold, which had somehow come to space with the astronauts and cargo. Soon, menacing white fuzz began choking the plants.
By this time, Lindgren had returned to Earth, and Kelly had taken over the garden. On December 22, with instructions from ground control, Kelly snipped away the moldy parts like bad spots from a piece of cheese, and swabbed the remaining zinnias and equipment with cleaning wipes. He left the fans on high to help dehydrate the setup.
It was a good try but not without a cost: It made the plants thirsty. Kelly relayed that to ground control and asked to water them. Sergeants who were set on sticking to the drill told Kelly it wasn’t time yet. Not till December 27. “You know, I think if we’re going to Mars, and we were growing stuff, we would be responsible for deciding when the stuff needed water,” Kelly told them, according to NASA’s write-up of the event.
Farm to table
On-Orbit Gardeners Kjell Lindgren (left) and Scott Kelly. The fast-growing salad green was the first plant to be grown, harvested, and eaten in space.
NASA
Eventually, they gave autonomy to the person who was actually next to the plants, along with one page of instructions called “The Zinnia Care Guide for the On-Orbit Gardener.”
Under the On-Orbit Gardener’s thumb, half of the zinnias revived, unfurling and growing green. NASA spun the whole thing as a positive: They now knew that crops could survive floods, drought, and disease, and that excising the problem plants and cleaning the remainder could keep the fungus from taking over.
Kelly loved the now-flourishing flowers and carried their container all over the space station for photo shoots, like those people who snap shots of themselves in Hard Rock T-shirts all over the world. “He asked if he could harvest them on Valentine’s Day,” Massa says. He’d been in space, away from everyone except his smelly crew mates for more than 300 days. NASA let him make the bouquet.
It was one of Massa’s favorite moments. “We had been a part of something that gave him pleasure,” she says.
In upcoming Veggie experiments, scientists will learn more about that part of gardening—the mental part. “We’ve heard a lot anecdotally,” Massa says, “but we’ve never been able to collect data.” They’ll also investigate how much farming crewmembers actually want to do, how much is fun versus how much is a chore, how their sense of taste changes in orbit, and which plants can survive human error (no offense, astronauts).
Veggie’s experiments will continue in tandem with those of a brand-new Type-A companion, the Advanced Plant Habitat, an 18-inch-square self-sufficient laboratory with more than 180 sensors and automated watering. Scientists can establish their variables and thus nail down the specific conditions that cultivate plants—and how those plants can cultivate humans. A temperature-control system keeps the air within 0.5°C of the thermostat setting. Sensors relay data about air temperature, light, moisture, and oxygen levels back to base. While the Advanced Plant Habitat will quantify the circumstances for successful gardening, Veggie will help qualify how—and why—humans can facilitate their own food supply. In other words, through the habitat’s tight controls, researchers can learn how to grow which plants best. Then, using those parameters, they can set up a system like Veggie that astronauts get to interact with.
Astronauts assembled the habitat over six hours in October 2017, after it rumbled into space in two shipments. The automated contraption looks like a microwave that could survive… being shot into space. Wires stream from here to there and there to here on a control panel. Red indicator lights blink next to toggle switches. And inside the plant chamber, LEDs beam from the ceiling, illuminating the plants below with concert-stage color combinations. It has red, green, and blue lights like Veggie—plus white, near-, and far-infrared ones.
Plants might also be a brain boost. "It's the psychological aspect of having something green and growing when you're far away fom home," says Massa.
The Voorhes
Robert Richter, director of environmental systems at Sierra Nevada Corporation, which acquired Orbitec in 2014, monitored its progress from the earthbound Space Station Processing Facility. He’d helped design and build the new lab, as well as Veggie and Biomass. When he started in the field, almost 20 years ago, he was a bit naive. “I thought, How hard is it to grow plants?”
He’s partly joking, of course—and he knows, now, that when you’re trying to keep the humidity level within 3 percent of a given number, when you must make and measure light and moisture, and when you maintain the temperature to a fraction of a degree, there’s a long row to hoe between growing some basil in a cup and farming lettuce in space.
The team powered up the unit in November 2017. And by February this year, test crops of Arabidopsis thaliana and dwarf wheat sprouted. Soon, they’ll begin experiments like investigating plants’ DNA and physiological changes. A lot of the previous plant research has been focused on whether things would grow at all, says Robert Morrow, Sierra Nevada Corporation’s principal scientist. Will they reproduce from generation to generation? And are they as productive in space as on the ground?
Yes, he says. Scientists are beyond those basics now. They need to dig into the dirtier details and more-complicated ecosystems. Astronauts, for instance, exhale carbon dioxide that plants can inhale. The plants then exhale oxygen, which humans can inhale. Human waste can become plant fertilizer and hydration. Nothing wasted, everything gained.
Ultimately, Morrow believes, a garden on a deep-space mission will be more like Veggie than like the Advanced Space Habitat. “It’s really not practical to put all the stuff you have in APH in a system like that,” he says. With so many sensors and tubes, lots can go mechanically wrong, and it’s easier to repair a Veggie than an APH. For now, scientists need APH to home in on optimal guidelines for plant growth and understand how leaving the planet changes them so they can instruct future astronauts how to better manage Veggie-esque systems.
Looking toward the future, Massa is interested in observing astronaut interactions with the instruments. “Do you always want to pick your ripe tomatoes, but maybe you don’t want to have to water them every other day?” she wonders. She’ll have a chance to find out because Veggie will grow its first dwarf tomatoes, a variety called Red Robin, early next year.
Other nations continue to experiment too. China, for instance, intends to send silkworms and potato seeds to the moon this year aboard its Chang’e-4 spacecraft. When the silkworms hatch, they’ll create carbon dioxide, which the potato plants will suck up and turn into oxygen, which the silkworms will then take up.
All this research doesn’t just help people above the atmosphere. Creating self-contained growth systems might help farmers on Earth grow crops year-round or foster plants with extra protein and high yield. Someday, the work will lead to gardening systems substantial—and stable—enough to support space journeyers. Then, those travelers can wrap anything they want in lettuce and crunch their way through the cosmos.
Contributing editor Sarah Scoles is the author of Making Contact: Jill Tartar and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.
This article was originally published in the Summer 2018 Life/Death issue of Popular Science.
Tags: Science gardening farming space travel Features summer 2018 Technology Space
Adjusting Lighting Conditions To Grow NASA Salads
Adjusting Lighting Conditions To Grow NASA Salads
Osram is providing the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) with a customized version of its proprietary connected horticulture research lighting system, Phytofy RL. The smart lighting software, coupled with a unique setup of connected grow light fixtures, will supplement the lighting technology used in NASA’s Food Production. Research focused on production of salad-type crops for crews during space travel.
All software, hardware and LEDs in Phytofy were developed by Osram. Osram has developed a broad portfolio of horticulture LEDs that irradiate the specific wavelengths needed for optimum growth of a wide variety of plants and flowers, allowing the light to be adapted specifically for the needs of various crops.
“Osram is developing smart, innovative lighting technologies that can improve food production in a variety of environments, even unique environments like space,” said Steve Graves, Strategic Program Manager of Urban & Digital Farming, Osram Innovation, Americas Region. “Many of the world’s coolest and most beneficial inventions have come from scientists at NASA over the past several decades, and to play a role in empowering further innovation through the use of our technologies is an honor. We are excited about the possibilities Phytofy RL will bring to a wide variety of horticulture applications, and our teams are excited to continue learning and refining its setup before ultimately bringing this exclusive solution to market within the next year.”
NASA was introduced to Osram through Hort Americas, which works closely with leading manufacturers to provide North American greenhouse growers, vertical farmers and researchers with the most technically advanced and cost-effective products to help them reach their yield, quality and project goals. Members of NASA's food production research team presented Hort Americas with a list of features they wanted from a lighting fixture, Hort Americas then used its network to help NASA team up with Osram to learn more about the Phytofy RL horticulture lighting technology.
Phytofy’s unique features include:
- A UV channel which provides researchers with the ability to add a brief UV light to see how plants react and change.
- More LEDs, which means a higher Photosynthetic Photon Flux (PPF). PPF measures light emission by calculating how many photons are coming out of the light every second. This is an important metric for plant researchers so they can determine the most efficient and effective light recipes.
- An Irradiance Map – Researchers can see the irradiance using Osram software, so there is no need for them to measure irradiance separately before changing the light setting.
Osram’s smart horticulture lighting system is being piloted through a series of collaborations with universities and research labs around the world that are using the technologies and sharing insights. At NASA, Phytofy RL will allow researchers to easily adjust lighting conditions to optimize plant growth in various conditions and then replicate those settings in the Advanced Plant Habitat on the International Space Station, meeting the sophisticated needs of space food production. Installation of Phytofy RL within a growth chamber at Kennedy Space Center in Florida was completed recently, with plans to move the configuration to one or more of the Center’s walk-in plant grow rooms.
Via radiation with light of different wavelengths, the growth cycles of plants can be controlled and accelerated, allowing the plants to be harvested either more often or as required. Special light recipes optimize not only yield and growing time but also can increase the amount of vitamins and nutrients in the plant, and can enhance certain tastes and flavors. LEDs not only provide tailor-made bioactive lighting, but are also very efficient.
For more information:
Osram
www.osram.com/horticulture