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Providing Tailored Crop Recipes, So Clients Can Hit the Ground Running
“You could best divide our products and services into three parts, being: external research and in-house contract research in our R&D labs, providing total indoor farming solutions, and collaborating in research projects,” explains Maarten Vandecruys, co-founder and CTO at Urban Crop Solutions (UCS)
By Rebekka Boekhout
July 8, 2021
“You could best divide our products and services into three parts, being: external research and in-house contract research in our R&D labs, providing total indoor farming solutions, and collaborating in research projects,” explains Maarten Vandecruys, co-founder and CTO at Urban Crop Solutions (UCS).
The Plant Biology team
UCS, a Belgian pioneer company in the indoor farming scene, recently made headlines with the announcement that the research consortium with whom they are developing the next generation of bread products to support future space missions, SpaceBakery, won the Gold Prize at the Global Space Exploration Conference. But intergalactic missions aren’t the only thing on the company’s mind…
UCS's ModuleX growing solution in action
Tailored recipes
“We are already looking into expanding our Research Centre due to the high demand for our contract research services, and our indoor biology research expertise. Our added value is to provide a completely tailored plant recipe as part of our end-to-end solution offering,” said Maarten. Normally, a product will be delivered and it’s up to the customer to see how the product works. However, UCS firmly believes that aftercare delivers the best results.
Depending on the crops to be grown, the client first has to give certain specifics about the preferred crop. Then UCS will look into its existing growing recipes, and whether it fits their needs. Eventually, if it’s something new or deviating from it, then UCS starts research on finding the best growing envelope for the client. “We’d rather sit down with them, providing the right solution so clients can hit the ground running,” Maarten notes.
Read the complete article here
For more information:
Maarten Vandecruys, Co-founder & CTO
Urban Crop Solutions
maarten.vandecruys@urbancropsolutions.com
www.urbancropsolutions.com
USA - MIAMI, FLORIDA: Three Local Men Hope To See Their Work On ISS
“We have been involved in this program with NASA for years, after conversations about the challenge of growing plants in space,” Lewis said. “Year One was about how to make the best use of limited growing volume on a spacecraft
July 7, 2021
Three South Florida men with diverse backgrounds — and all volunteers at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden — have teamed together in a unique collaboration to design a plant-growing method that they hope will someday be found on the International Space Station (ISS).
It’s all part of the nationwide Growing Beyond Earth Maker Challenge that calls for contestants in three team categories — High School, College and Professional — to submit designs for growing plants in space. Six finalists remain out of the 60 original submissions in year two of the three-year contest.
Jack Hahn, a photographer, heard about the program while working as a volunteer in the Fairchild Imaging Lab, was intrigued and submitted a proposal to grow “veggies in space that do well in microgravity.” His proposal impressed the judges — Dr. Gioia Massa, NASA Plant Research; Trent Smith, NASA Procurement, and Ralph Fritsche, NASA Veggie Project Manager — and he became one of the six finalists in the Professional (non-collegiate) category.
According to Dr. Carl E. Lewis, Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden director, each year of the competition is intentionally getting more challenging.
“We have been involved in this program with NASA for years, after conversations about the challenge of growing plants in space,” Lewis said. “Year One was about how to make the best use of limited growing volume on a space craft. This year is about automation. Can you set it and forget it? Next year will be about robotic planting and harvesting. We’re looking forward to seeing what you [contestants] come up with.”
After Hahn was selected for phase two of the competition, the Kendall resident realized he needed more assistance.
“I was very excited to hear that I was a finalist,” said Hahn, husband of Marjorie Hahn, executive and music director of the South Florida Youth Symphony. “But I realized that I needed to put together a team with various skill-sets and talents to go further.”
So, in May, Hahn met with the other two Fairchild volunteers who responded to an email he sent — Coconut Grove’s Nic Brunk, a molecular biologist (and crew coach for the Miami Beach Rowing Club), and Shenandoah’s Allen Diehl, a photographer with a degree in mechanical engineering.
Their goal is to grow high-density vegetables (with a high Vitamin K benefit) in a limited amount of space (a 50 cm cubic growing environment) using an autonomous system that won’t require any further human interaction (after initial seed planting) over a 30-day period.
Together, the three South Florida “scientists” have come up with an eye-catching design (with the limited constraints on size per NASA’s specs) that, well, looks like something from outer space. It has three levels (heights) for the difference phases of growth of the red romaine lettuce most competitors are using.
And, in a bold move they hope will impress the judges — and be used in future growth models in space — the threesome is growing their plants hydroponically.
“Even though you think of ‘weightlessness’ in space, weight is everything, including in the space shuttle bringing supplies to the ISS,” Brunk said. “Soil is weight and messy to deal with, especially in space.”
Diehl said, “Hydroponics is definitely the way to go. It eliminates the soil factor, and you can recycle or repurpose the water.”
Basically, the automation model the threesome has developed works by small computer, which turns the growing lights on/off, and activates fans and pumps. Additional automation to replenish the nutrient solution levels will follow.
But all three agree that the small monetary prize which awaits the winner of the NASA/Fairchild collaboration, which will be announced in July/August of this year, is not the reason for the countless hours of sometimes tedious work.
“This competition will provide NASA with valuable input and data, which will someday enable those on the International Space Station as well as Moon and Mars missions with a means of complimenting their diet while giving them something live and green to look at in a sterile environment,” Hahn said. “It will be great to know that our team had something to do with that.”
Lead photo: Jack Hahn (left) has joined with Nic Brunk (center) and Allen Diehl in the Growing Beyond Earth Maker Challenge to find effective ways to grow plants in space.
Urban Crop Solutions SpaceBakery Project Wins First Place At Global Space Exploration Conference
The winning SpaceBakery project is an interdisciplinary cooperative research project between seven partners, of whom, Urban Crop Solutions is the lead vertical farming technology and research partner
The Global Space Exploration Conference (GLEX) took place in St. Petersburg in June 2021. The conference brought together several leaders and decision-makers in the international science and space exploration community. Urban Crop Solutions and partners were selected to present two projects of the 250 that were presented during the conference. The SpaceBakery project was awarded the first-place prize.
Organised by the International Astronautical Federation (IAF) and Roscosmos (the Russian space agency responsible for space flights and aerospace research), the conference gathered several international stakeholders from the science and space exploration community, on a year which marks the 60th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s spaceflight.
The winning SpaceBakery project is an interdisciplinary cooperative research project between seven partners, of whom, Urban Crop Solutions is the lead vertical farming technology and research partner. The objective of the consortium is to develop the next generation of bread products to support future space missions and aid the long-term survival of settlers on Mars, in addition to being applicable for modern agriculture. The overall goals and objectives of the consortium were presented by the Puratos Group (Belgium), the leading commercial partner of the SpaceBakery project.
Urban Crop Solutions also presented another joint project, the ‘variable climate biosphere’ that they have designed. The variable climate biosphere is a macro life support system that aims to create the best-suited environment for humans and plants to thrive together during extended periods of isolation, either on another planet – namely, the moon and Mars – or on earth in an underground shelter. The presentation showcased the 3D renderings, as well as the results that have so far been obtained.
“Our approach to partner with ambitious global industrial groups and research institutions for controlled indoor farming solutions is finally paying off. We feel that we are at the cutting-edge with our technology, products and services in the fast-emerging urban farming industry – whether it is in space, in cities, on the surface or beneath it.” – Maarten Vandecruys, CTO and co-founder of Urban Crop Solutions
ABOUT UCS
Urban Crop Solutions is a Belgium-based pioneer in the fast-emerging technology of indoor vertical farming. It has developed over the past six years, 220+ plant growth recipes in its research centre in Waregem, Belgium. To date, UCS has delivered over 25 projects in multiple global locations. Their farms are being operated both for commercial and research purposes. Uses range from the production of leafy greens, microgreens, and herbs for food retail, service and industrial use, and scientific research across multiple institutions.
Website: www.urbancropsolutions.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/urbancropsolutions
Twitter: www.twitter.com/U_C_Solutions
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/urbancropsolutions
For more information on this press release, on Urban Crop Solutions and their products and services, or the SpaceBakery project, you may contact Maarten Vandecruys, Serge Ameye or Lucie Beckers.
Maarten Vandecruys
Founder & CTO, UCS
maarten.vandecruys@urbancropsolutions.com
Serge Ameye,
Space, Tunnels & Special Projects, UCS
serge.ameye@marsbakingsociety.space
Lucie Beckers,
Research Manager Agronomy, Puratos Group
LBeckers@puratos.com
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.
How The International Space Station Helps NASA Study Plant Growth In Space
Food for crews aboard the ISS is prepackaged, degrades, and requires resupply. But what if astronauts could grow some of their own food in microgravity?
As NASA plans long-duration missions to the Moon and Mars, a key factor is figuring out how to feed crews during their weeks, months, and even years in space.
Food for crews aboard the International Space Station is primarily prepackaged, requires regular resupply deliveries aboard cargo spacecraft, and degrades in quality and nutrition after about 18 months. But what if astronauts could grow some of their own food in microgravity? Researchers on Earth and crews aboard the International Space Station are exploring the idea by testing various crops and equipment to see if the plan could work.
NASA hopes to successfully grow fresh, pick-and-eat crops that are easy to produce and do not require a lot of extra equipment or precious electrical power. “Crews really seem to enjoy growing the food themselves,” said Howard Levine, chief scientist for NASA’s International Space Station Research Office at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. “It’s a nice reprieve from typical activities on the station, and astronauts often volunteer their free time to do it.”
To date, NASA has grown a variety of plants, including lettuces, mustard varieties, and radishes – and learned a lot about how to successfully do so in the process.
Here are seven aspects of plant growth they are studying aboard the space station:
1) Picking the right plants
What grows well on Earth may or may not do so well in space. Before sending a crop to space, scientists must identify which plants to test aboard the space station. To improve that process, NASA started a project in 2015 with the Fairchild Botanical Garden in Miami called “Growing Beyond Earth.” The program has recruited more than 230 middle and high school science classes across the U.S. to grow different seeds using special equipment. Seeds that grow well in the classrooms are then tested in a chamber at Kennedy that closely resembles the space station’s equipment. Selected seeds that do well at Kennedy are then sent to the station. How they grow in orbit can inform the selection of plants for long-duration missions only minimal crew attention.
2) Learning to garden in space
Plants need a place to grow, and NASA has tested out a number of facilities to host a microgravity garden. One way is by experimenting with the Vegetable Production System, or “Veggie,” which is a simple, low-power gardening chamber that can hold six crop plants. Seeds are grown in small fabric “pillows” placed in Veggie. Crews then look after and water the plants by hand, similar to caring for a window herb garden on Earth.
NASA is developing another system, called the Passive Orbital Nutrient Delivery System, or PONDS, to work with the Veggie platform. PONDS replaces the seed pillows with a new plant holder that automatically feeds and waters the produce, but still requires the crew to do some cultivation tasks. Research also uses a hands-off system called the Advanced Plant Habitat. This fully automated device is designed to study the physiology of how plants grow in space in ways that require only minimal crew attention.
3) The right light
The composition of light that shines on plants can affect their size, nutritional content, microbial growth, and taste. Plants particularly rely on red and blue light to grow. Researchers ran experiments aboard the space station to see how different ratios of red and blue light influenced plant development in space. The experiments showed that plants in space grow well under the same light conditions preferred by plants on Earth. While green lights are not necessary for plant growth, they are included in plant growth systems so the plants also appear similar to those grown on Earth.
4) The influence of gravity
Changes in gravity can affect how plants grow and how many crops they yield. Plants can sense gravity using a mechanism that involves changes to calcium within their cells. Astronauts recently ran experiments aboard the space station to measure how microgravity affects these calcium levels, which could offer clues for designing improved ways of growing crops for food in space.
In the PESTO experiment, crews grew wheat plants to see how microgravity may change some of their key features. They found that microgravity alters leaf development, plant cells, and the chloroplasts used in photosynthesis, but did not harm the plants overall -- in fact, wheat plants grew 10% taller compared to those on Earth.
Station crews also successfully grew two generations of mustard plants using the Advanced Astroculture chamber for an experiment that showed the change in gravity caused seeds to be smaller and secondary branches and seed pods to grow differently. Additionally, the experiment grew soybeans from seed-to-seed in space, which produced larger plants and seeds.
5) Water delivery
One significant challenge to growing plants in microgravity is providing enough water to their roots to keep them healthy without drowning the plants in too much water. Numerous experiments have tested a variety of methods to achieve this, including the new PONDS facility mentioned above and the Plant Water Management experiment. The water management study demonstrated a hydroponic method for providing water and air to the root zone to help them grow. Researchers are growing plants both aboard the space station and on Earth to compare how well they develop.
6) How old is too old?
Future space missions could go on for years, which means the seeds that astronauts bring along could be far from fresh by the time they need to plant them. On Earth, seeds have a decrease in viability and germination over time. But how do the age of seeds and long-term exposure to the spaceflight environment affect their ability to germinate and grow? To find out, in January 2021 NASA grew lettuce and seeds from the cabbage family (kale, mustard, and bok choi) that had been aboard the station for nearly three years. The results showed that while the lettuce seeds did not grow well compared to seeds that had been in space less time, the mustard seeds responded better than expected to the storage time in space.
7) The human effect
Gardens need tending, of course, which means astronauts or robots have to look after the plants that are growing. NASA studied how gardening in space could contribute to the behavior and well-being of astronauts. Many astronauts reported they found caring for the plants a fun and relaxing activity.
“Taking care of plants can also help astronauts stay in touch with the life cycles on Earth,” said Gioia Massa, a life sciences project scientist at Kennedy. Massa’s research focuses on growing plants aboard the space station.
What’s more, astronauts say the time spent gardening makes them excited to eat the fresh produce once it’s ready. The excitement motivates astronauts to creatively use the produce as ingredients in their meals, increasing their quality of life in space and boosting their morale.
For more information:
NASA
www.nasa.gov
8 Apr 2021
How To Grow Better Lettuce … In Space
The key to better eating on Mars might be a technology whose main commercial use today is enhancing the colors on television screens
Larissa Zimberoff
March 27, 2021
(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- The key to better eating on Mars might be a technology whose main commercial use today is enhancing the colors on television screens.
Quantum dots, or QDs, are tiny man-made particles whose properties can be manipulated so they emit specific colors when exposed to light. In consumer electronics, this proves useful for making brighter, more energy-efficient screens. In agricultural settings, quantum dots can be integrated into films that convert sunlight to orange and red light, colors that boost plants’ photosynthetic efficiency.
Directing the light from high-intensity lamps through a film-coated in quantum dots increased leaf size and yield in romaine lettuce by 13% in a recent study published in the journal Communications Biology. (The type of romaine the researchers used is called “Outrageous.”) Such films could significantly improve the prospects of extraterrestrial crops, by converting the ultraviolet radiation common in space into light that’s nourishing to Earth plants. It puts a new spin on the long-standing assumption that the way to higher yields is more light. Now growers can turn the light they already have into something better.
The NASA-funded study was conducted by the University of Arizona and UbiQD Inc.—pronounced “ubiquity”—a New Mexico-based startup that makes the film. Gene Giacomelli, a professor of horticultural engineering at the university who oversaw the study, says the technique is attractive because it requires no energy to operate, needs only lightweight materials, and can be easily installed. He’s confident it could be used to grow food on the moon, where he envisions densely packed rows of lunar lettuce. “They’ll grow to a foot tall,” he says. If we create a way for people to survive on the moon or Mars, “then I’m quite sure the plants would thrive, grow, and produce.”
© Photographer: Cassidy Araiza for Bloomberg Businessweek tech_food_07 This image can only be used with attached article for period of 90 days from publication
For now, there aren’t enough humans living in space to support a market for salad. Until that happens, UbiQD is primarily selling its films to agricultural clients on Earth. The company has conducted more than 60 trials, including the largest cucumber grower in North America and a tomato grower in Spain that reported a 20% yield increase in one crop cycle.
UbiQD produces rolls of film that are 4 feet wide, and it’s working on a 60-foot-wide version that would be more useful in large-scale agricultural operations. UbiQD, which has partnered with Solvay SA, an industry leader in producing greenhouse films, closed a $7 million Series A funding round in December. Nanosys Inc., the largest manufacturer of quantum dots, joined the round as a strategic investor.
“I believe that advanced materials underpin every technological advancement in the history of civilization,” says Hunter McDaniel, a former materials scientist at New Mexico’s Los Alamos National Lab who is UbiQD’s founder and chief executive officer. He hopes to use the prospect of space as a way to make quantum dots seem like an essential part of any serious growing operation. “What’s the ultimate in ubiquitous if not going off the planet?” he asks. “You leave the planet, you’re in the lead.”
It wouldn’t be the first time NASA’s research affected Earth-bound agriculture. The agency was early in funding tests of LED lights, which have been adopted by vertical farms—indoor facilities with growing trays stacked high on top of one another. Vertical farmers spent more than $1.2 billion on LED lighting in 2019, according to Emergen Research.
Margins in farming are very low, so any technique that can squeeze additional yield is attractive. But many operations are wary of new capital expenses. UbiQD’s film costs about $3 a square foot and has no operational costs. McDaniel says most customers can earn back their investment within two years, though more profitable crops, such as cannabis, may do so in a single season.
Although persuading a traditionally conservative industry to invest in QDs has been slow going, UbiQD thinks the market could be significant. For his part, Giacomelli is halfway through a study for NASA testing varieties of light specifically tuned for different crop types. “There’s going to be a recipe for every plant, every variety, and every age,” he says.
Lead photo: © Photographer: Cassidy Araiza for Bloomberg Businessweek tech_food_grid
For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com
©2021 Bloomberg L.P.
Training Artificial Intelligence To Track Greenhouses in Antarctica and Mars
Modern technology has long become a fixture in all spheres of human life on Earth. Reaching out to other planets is a new challenge for humankind
FEBRUARY 17, 2021
Credit: Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology
Scientists from the Skoltech Center for Computational and Data-Intensive Science and Engineering (CDISE) and the Skoltech Digital Agriculture Laboratory and their collaborators from the German Aerospace Center (DLR) have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) system that enables processing images from autonomous greenhouses, monitoring plant growth and automating the cultivation process. Their research was published in the journal IEEE Sensors.
Modern technology has long become a fixture in all spheres of human life on Earth. Reaching out to other planets is a new challenge for humankind. Since greenhouses are likely to be the only source of fresh food for Mars space crews and settlers, development of artificial intelligence (AI) and computer-vision-based technologies for plant growth automation is perceived as a priority research target. A test site is already in place for developing and testing advanced life support systems: An autonomous plant cultivation module is operating at the Antarctic Neumayer Station III near the South Pole. Right now, scientists are focusing on creating an AI system that could collect information about all the plant growth factors and seedling health and control greenhouses in autonomous mode without human involvement.
"One cannot maintain continuous communication with Neumayer III, and training computer vision models onboard requires too many resources, so we had to find a way to send a stream of plant photographs to external servers for data processing and analysis," Skoltech Ph.D. student Sergey Nesteruk explains.
As a conclusion to their research, the Skoltech team processed a collection of images from remote automated systems using their new approach based on convolutional neural networks and outperforming popular codecs by over seven times in reducing the image size without apparent quality degradation. The researchers used the information from the reconstructed images to train a computer vision algorithm which, once trained, is capable of classifying 18 plant varieties according to species at different stages of development with an accuracy of 92%. This approach makes it possible to both visually monitor the system operation and continuously gather new ML model training data in order to enhance the models' functionality.
There are plans to deploy and test the new systems right on Neumayer III, which will mark an important step towards automation of plant growing modules, thus removing yet another roadblock on the way to Mars.
Lead photo: Plant cultivation module in Antarctica. Credit: Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology
Russia Invents New Way To Grow Vegetables In SPACE
How do you grow something in space when there's no gravity, electromagnetic field or sunlight? For more than 50 years, scientists from different countries have been trying their best to solve the problem. Some experiments were even somewhat successful
RBTH
26 Dec 2020
Space wheat, peas, onions, and lettuce... dreams of planting your own food in space have taken a huge leap forward. And it's all thanks to a small step by a clever new system.
How do you grow something in space when there's no gravity, electromagnetic field or sunlight? For more than 50 years, scientists from different countries have been trying their best to solve the problem. Some experiments were even somewhat successful. But now, for the first time, we have a way to grow a large amount of vegetables in space at once.
It's all in the tubes
"A vitamin space greenhouse" is how they refer to 'Vitacikl-T' - a titanium tube setup that allows a conveyor-belt system to grow vegetables aboard the International Space Station. It was developed after Russia lost it’s own 'Lada' greenhouse in 2016: its modified version then made it into orbit, before blowing up together with the Progress spacecraft.
The construction consists of a spinning drum with six root modules. Planting takes place in the first module, followed by another in four days, and so on. In 24 days, you get a harvest in the first module, which gets collected, before the module is refilled with new seeds. The operations are performed in a cycle, one taking place every 44-66 days and, for the time being, this type of setup has been able to produce bigger and better results than any other foreign-made space gardens.
'Vitacikl-T' - Institute of Biomedical Problems (IBMP) RAS
Another invention here is the titanium porous tube system, which penetrates the artificial soil the way arteries do, in order to carry water.
"You can't just water plants in space: the stream turns into drops, flying in all directions. And if you use a capillary tube structure, the water slowly seeps through the pores, straight to the roots of the plants," says Maksim Sheverdyayev, head of the department for special non-nuclear materials at Rosatom.
Cosmonaut Sergei Volkov and the "Lada" - IBMP / Roskosmos
When there's a lack of enough moisture in the soil replacement system, a discharge occurs, which is measured by pressure sensors. When the soil becomes too dry, the computer sends more water.
For now, the plan is to only grow lettuce - whose purpose is also to add variety to the cosmonauts' space diet. But the idea for a space greenhouse should become indispensable in the future, during a potential space colonization, when the need for an autonomous closed ecosystem with water and oxygen is predicted to become especially high.
Space farm?
In actuality, Russian cosmonauts already managed to grow a lot of plants in orbit. The first cultures were sent there way back in 1960, with the second 'Sputnik' ship, together with Belka and Strelka - the two famous dogs. How did the seeds react to microgravity? Was the harvest safe for consumption? Did it affect the plants' DNA? All of these questions (and more) have led to the types of experiments today that should give us the high-tech autonomous system we'll no doubt require in the future.
'Trapezium' - Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics
The growing itself, for the time being, happens in quite a compact setup - as the one in the American segment of the ISS and - until recently - the Russian one. Talk of a mass-scale greenhouse is still just talk at this point.
"There are two ways growing can happen in zero gravity. The plants either attach to a surface, winding around it, or they tend toward some light source - it all depends on their type," cosmonaut Sergey Prokopyev explains. "The plants are grown hydroponically. Horizontally attached receptacles with artificial substrate receive seeds and conditions are created for air to penetrate the greenhouse through the capsule."
Oasis - Journal of Technology-Youth, 1983
The water and nutrients are fed automatically, although, until now, some astronauts perform the procedure manually, using a syringe and tubes, straight into the substrate. The path to doing it this way was a thorny one, however.
In 1974, aboard the 'Salut-4' orbital station, there was a hydroponics setup called 'Oasis'. Cosmonaut Georgy Grechko was trying to grow peas this way. There was no soil and the peas had to grow through a soaked net. Soon after work began, huge water droplets would begin leaking from the system, with Grechko having to chase them with napkins. He ended up cutting the hose and watering manually.
Oasis-1 - Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics
However, this wasn't the only issue. In his book, 'Cosmonaut no.34', he confessed that his hatred of biology in school almost cost him the entire experiment. He thought the sprouts were getting trapped in the cloth and growing incorrectly and freed them from the net. Turned out he confused the roots with the stems.
Tsiolkovsky's space greenhouse - Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics
Despite this, the experiment was concluded successfully. The peas began their cycle - from seed to stem. But of the 36 seeds, only three grew successfully. Why? Well, the scientists thought it was down to the genetic characteristics, which depended on the Earth's orientation - geotropics: the sprout always tends toward the light and the stem in the opposite direction.
Imitating the Earth
After that factor was taken into account, the setup was modified and new seeds were sent into orbit, with success all around. But the plants wouldn't bloom - just as it happened in 1980, with orchids that had been blooming before departure to space. In several days, the flowers would fall, despite new leaves continuing to grow, as it happened with the roots. A theory then merged that the Earth's magnetic field was at play.
Oleg Artemiev / Roscosmos
The father of cosmonautics, Konstantin Tsyolkovsky, described a solution to the problem. He developed a plan to create an artificial gravitational field, involving growing the plants in a centrifuge. The practical solution already existed in 1933. The centrifuge did help: the sprouts turned according to the vector of the centrifugal force. The experiment successfully grew Arabidopsis and rockcress.
Oleg Artemiev / Roscosmos
Following the success, cosmonauts continued to take seeds into space, successfully growing onions, wheat, lettuce, cabbage and other cultures - as well as doing so in open space. In 2007-2008, there was the 'Biorisk' experiment, which involved mustard seeds, rice, tomatoes, radish, yeast, rockcress and nicandra growing for 13 months in a container aboard the ISS. The tomatoes were the only ones to perish - others made it back to Earth, preserving their freshness.
Roscosmos
Eating space-grown cultures has been allowed by law since the 1980s, when scientists first determined their safety, upon studying the effects of such a process of cultivation.
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.
Enea Works on The Future of Vegetable Production
A team of Italian scientists designed GREENCUBE, the first micro-plot to grow vegetables during future space missions
A team of Italian scientists designed GREENCUBE, the first micro-plot to grow vegetables during future space missions. It will be launched into orbit 6,000 km from Earth during the maiden voyage of the VEGA-C rocket by the European Space Agency (ESA). ENEA, Università Federico II in Naples, and Università La Sapienza in Rome take part as coordinators and partners of an agreement with the Italian Space Agency (ASI).
Above: Microgreens Greencube drawing
The prototype (see photo below) measures 30x10x10 cm and envisages closed-cycle hydroponic crops that can guarantee a complete growth cycle of micro-vegetables selected among the most suitable to endure extreme extraterrestrial conditions.
The project is part of ENEA's mission aimed at applying scientific research results to the industry and public administration with sustainable economic development in mind. In this case, we have infrastructures and skills developed for the cultivation of fresh vegetables in closed secluded environments surrounded by extreme conditions such as those found in space.
Luca Nardi
How long will it take for the experiments in space to find practical applications in terrestrial agriculture?
"This experiment will help create a completely automated cultivation system integrated with sensors and non-destructive diagnostic techniques. This was made possible thanks to the cooperation of aerospace engineers, agronomists, and biologists," explained Luca Nardi, a researcher at the ENEA lab.
"A lot of the research conducted in space has been applied to everyday life. In this case, we are trying to grow high-quality produce in a small environment and in extremely hostile conditions by carefully measuring resources while remotely analyzing the health conditions of plants."
"Thanks to the efforts of the Italian Space Agency (ASI) and AVIO, it will be possible for many young university students and researchers to conduct experiments in space using small satellites and significantly reducing waiting times and launch costs."
The Greencube project was financed by ASI. The satellite was entirely built by a group of young aerospace engineers: Paolo Marzioli, Federico Curianò, Lorenzo Frezza, Diego Amadio, and Luca Gugliermetti coordinated by Professor Fabio Santoni from Università la Sapienza in Rome and in collaboration with Giulio Metelli, a biologist from ENEA'S biotechnology laboratory and Professor's Stefania de Pascale research team at Università Federico II in Naples. This platform will also be used to set up production systems in an urban environment.
Above: Drawing Microgreens Greencube photosynthesis diagram
Will this study support the challenge against climate change, one of the main enemies of intensive produce cultivation?
"The studies conducted aim at growing produce in small volumes in the cities too (urban farming) using all the space available also thanks to developed systems and the employment of smart farming techniques. The absence of soil and the impossibility to use direct solar light make this challenge truly difficult."
"Managing to cultivate in indoor farming facilities by carefully using resources such as water, fertilizers, and energy while reducing waste and recycling human and plant waste thanks to the degradation action of micro-organisms forms an integral part of the study at the basis of life-support bioregenerative systems: they are true artificial ecosystems where plants, micro-organisms, and men interact. These systems will be employed more and more in the future to produce food locally and in closed environments while respecting the environment and making production unaffected by the climate and adverse weather events."
Above: breathing diagram
What species have been chosen to conduct the experiments and why?
"We have chosen micro-vegetables such as brassicas to assess their response to the extreme stress conditions generated by radiations, micro-gravity, and reduced pressure. The comparison between the results obtained in space and on Earth will be crucial to assess the possibility of using micro-vegetables as a fresh high-nutrient food in future space missions."
Are you considering the patenting of new varieties?
"Not in this case, as we will be using commercial varieties. We did do it as part of the Bioxtreme project financed by ASI, during which we engineered Microtom tomatoes to produce anthocyanins in plants to protect the plant itself and provide these powerful natural antioxidants to the astronauts."
Publication date: Wed 29 Apr 2020
© HortiDaily.com
Urban Crop Solutions Makes Indoor Farming Technology For Mars Biosphere
Will the first people to bake and eat bread on Mars do it due to a Belgian breakthrough? This is the challenge facing the SpaceBakery project, a unique consortium composed of seven Belgian organisations using technology provided by Urban Crop Solutions
Will the first people to bake and eat bread on Mars do it due to a Belgian breakthrough? This is the challenge facing the SpaceBakery project, a unique consortium composed of seven Belgian organisations using technology provided by Urban Crop Solutions. However, before they use their research to help feed the first people on the red planet later this century, the project aims to have a clear impact on Earth today. The project will focus on how we can produce food more sustainably and will help provide a nutritional staple food for many regions across the globe. The consortium has just been awarded a subsidy of 4.5 million euros by the Flemish Community (VLAIO, Flanders Innovation & Entrepreneurship), contributing to a total of over 6.3 million euros in funding.
Together with Puratos group, Urban Crop Solutions started a journey of R&D for plant growth on the planet Mars in 2018. Now, almost 2 years later, both companies gathered the top of the Belgian scientific community to put their ideas in to practice and create added value for the planet earth as well.
Four large inter-connected containers will soon be installed at Puratos’ headquarters near Brussels, Belgium. From the outside they may seem ordinary, but on 1 January 2020 researchers will start work in the enclosed ecological plant cultivation system and bakery that could have a huge impact on our food production on Earth, as well as on Mars once humans launch their space exploration efforts.
“This project allows us to take our technology again one step further. By implementing AI, plant production will be maximized while further minimizing use of electricity and water. This is essential for plant production on Mars, but just as important here on planet Earth.” explains Maarten Vandecruys, co-founder and CTO of Urban Crop Solutions.The environment on Mars is very different from ours on Earth. The lack of atmosphere, cold temperatures, high radiation and dust storms don’t provide the right conditions to grow crops. It is for this reason that the research will take place in the containers, a completely sealed and self-sustainable environment, for which the climate can be adapted to make it suitable for both crop growth and for human life.
To obtain this knowledge, 5 separate research rooms will be dedicated for the coming 2.5 years in which over 50 different variables related to plant growth will constantly be monitored, which will result in individual plant growth models and algorithms.
Dr. Oscar Navarrete, Chief Plant Scientist at Urban Crop Solutions: “During this research, the challenge lies in the number of biological variables and parameters that will be tested to measure plant responses and their quality. This will deliver insights which helps us to unlock the full potential of plants in a controlled environment.
”In parallel to the research on crops, the consortium will also study many other aspects involved in the entire food production cycle, such as the use and recycling of resources, the monitoring of microbial climate, influence of radiation, and pollination through automated drones.
Urban Crop Solutions is a Belgium based pioneer in the fast-emerging technology of ‘Indoor Vertical Farming’. Throughout 5 years of research more than 220 plant growth recipes were developed. All drivers for healthy plant growth, such as optimal LED spectrum and intensity, nutrient mix, irrigation strategy, climate settings are tested and validated daily in its Indoor Farming Research Lab in Beveren-Leie (Belgium). To date, Urban Crop Solutions has manufactured 24 Container Farms and 1 Plant Factory for clients throughout Europe and North America. Urban Crop Solutions’ commercial farms are being operated for vegetables, herbs, micro-greens for food retail, food service and industrial use. Research institutions operate grow infrastructure of Urban Crop Solutions for scientific research on banana seedlings, flowers and hemp.
For more information on this press release, on Urban Crop Solutions or on the products and services of Urban Crop Solutions you can contact Tom Debusschere, Managing Director (tode@urbancropsolutions.com), or Maarten Vandecruys, Co-founder and CTO (mava@urbancropsolutions.com ) or visit our website (www.urbancropsolutions.com):
Company headquarters: Regional headquarters:
Grote Heerweg 67 800 Brickell Avenue, 1100 Suite
8791 Beveren-Leie (Waregem) Miami (FL 33131)
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A Software Update Will Instruct Space Tomatoes To Sprout
t’s hard enough to grow tomatoes from seeds out in a sunny garden patch. To do it in sun-synchronous orbit—that is to say, in outer space—would seem that much harder. But is it?
For Humans, A Trip To The Red Planet Would Be Much
Improved With A Certain Red Fruit
Photo: DLR
This is a testbed for the Eu:CROPIS greenhouse assembly, shown here boasting a good-size plant with several substrates. The surroundings are for an earthbound test, and the plant is a dwarf “Micro-Tina” early-flowering tomato that is genetically engineered to grow in space.
It’s hard enough to grow tomatoes from seeds out in a sunny garden patch. To do it in sun-synchronous orbit—that is to say, in outer space—would seem that much harder. But is it?
That’s what plant biologists and aerospace engineers in Cologne and Bremen, Germany, are set to find out. Researchers are preparing in the next couple of weeks to send a software upload to a satellite orbiting at 575 kilometers (357 miles) above Earth. Onboard the satellite are two small greenhouses, each one bearing six tiny tomato seeds and a gardener’s measure of hope. The upload is going to tell these seeds to go ahead and try to sprout.
The experiment aims to not only grow tomatoes in space but to examine the workings of combined biological life-support systems under specific gravitational conditions, namely, those on the moon and on Mars. Eu:CROPIS, which is the name of the satellite as well as the orbital tomato-growing program, is right now spinning at a rate that generates a force equal to that of gravity on the surface of the moon.
The environment is designed to work as a closed-loop: The idea is to employ algae, lava filters, plants, and recycled human urine to create the cycle by which plants absorb nitrates and produce oxygen. Being able to accomplish all these tasks will be crucial to any long-term stay in space, be it on a moon base or a year-long flight to Mars. Any humans along for that kind of ride will be glad to get away from tinned applesauce and surely welcome fresh greens or, say, a tomato.
The German space agency DLR greenlighted Eu:CROPIS seven years ago as part of its compact satellite development program, says Hartmut Müller, a systems engineer and, until recently, project manager for Eu:CROPIS (he’s since moved on to new projects). The completed Eu:CROPIS launched nearly a year ago on top of a SpaceX rocket from Vandenberg AFB in California.
This photo was taken during the construction of the Eu:CROPIS satellite. The wiring shown here is used to control subsystems and sensors on the shell.
Photo: DLR
The satellite itself is about the size and shape of an overlarge oil drum. There are four experiments in total onboard Eu:CROPIS. There are two tomato greenhouses: one to simulate the moon, the other for Mars. The lunar experiment happens first; then the satellite will change its rotation speed for the Mars trial.
Alongside the greenhouses, each the size of a large breadbox is a small NASA experiment called PowerCell, which is a bacteria colony fed by photosynthetic microbes; the setup is examining cell transformation and protein production in bacteria naturally found in the gut and soil. There is also an experiment measuring long-term exposure to cosmic radiation.
Plant physiologist and Eu:CROPIS primary investigator Jens Hauslage is busying himself these days managing the pending software upload for the greenhouses, which he says will control the valves, pumps, heater, and lighting for irrigation and growth of the tomato plants. Before last year’s launch, the DLR sent him out into a pasture to explain on camera that when cows pee in the field, they are introducing ammonia to bacteria in the soil, which is converted to the nitrates, which feed plants. This nitrogen cycle, properly balanced, is fundamental to life.
The DLR looks to replicate this process in the little orbiting greenhouses in the spinning satellite and to do so with tomatoes, which are complex flowering fruits, in a closed-loop system. The experiment is meant to work quite simply—or as simply as any biological process can be in space.
When the software tells the greenhouse valves to open, a precious and small amount of water will dampen a substrate under the tomato seeds. The water rinses algae known as Euglena gracilis, which can grow into a photosynthetically active culture. The algae supplies oxygen into a trickle filter, which is made from porous lava rock. The filter is meant to convert urine/urea into nitrate. In this case, a synthetic urine will be used, simulating the human urine from a long-term space residency.
The system introduces urine into the filter, which converts it to nitrate until the photosynthetic oxygen production kicks in from the (hopefully, growing) tomatoes. This is the beneficial cycle by which plants ultimately absorb the nitrates they need: The algae prefer ammonia over nitrate, and so should protect the seedlings from potentially toxic ammonia levels, filtering the synthetic urine and putting this waste material to use as a nitrogen source for the plants.
Mustard greens grow in the vegetable plant chamber on the International Space Station.
Photo: NASA
Space farming has a robust history, and, experts say, a demanding future.
Soviet cosmonauts grew the first plants in space in 1982 on board the Salyut 7, nurturing a member of the mustard family. Three-plus decades on, NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) are set, in November, to grow spicy Espanola chili peppers, says Raymond Wheeler, a longtime NASA plant physiologist at the Kennedy Space Center, in Florida. The peppers would be the first edible fruit grown in space by U.S. astronauts, though joint U.S.-Russian efforts have been successful in raising greens, soybeans, and wheat. Pepper plants were launched into a two-day orbit onboard a U.S. satellite in 1967, but they were pregrown and are a whole other story.
“We’re still trying to figure out the best way to water plants in space.”—Gioia Massa, NASA
It took a long time to get even there. Raising flowering plants, like tomatoes or strawberries, is more complicated than greens. Gary Stutte, a horticulturist and space agriculture consultant—and a former NASA colleague of Wheeler’s who was principal investigator on four spaceflight experiments—worked for years during the ’90s on an ingenious earthbound program called The Breadboard Project. Researchers developed a 156-cubic-meter testbed which had a 20-square-meter area to grow plants in the simulated environment of a space colony.
Stutte says there’s much left to figure out, including how plants respond to partial gravity and how best to use new LED technologies to manage and optimize the 400- to 700-spectra wavelengths best suited for space-borne plant photosynthesis. “These different colors of light change the way the plant grows and decide whether pigments are produced, whether it’s purple or green, whether the stem is tall or short, whether the leaves are upright or not,” Stutte says.
Photo: NASA
NASA astronaut Christina Koch initiates a plant growth experiment on the International Space Station within a Veggie unit by filling the upper reservoir.
Gioia Massa, who works on the Veggie plant growth system for the ISS, says research into spectra for space plants has flowered in recent years to the point where horticulturists talk about “light recipes” for custom growth spectra and managing quality, intensity, and duration for different kinds of plants. Indeed, Eu:CROPIS will use the LEDs in the little greenhouses to try to boost the tomato seeds’ chances of success.
The vacuum of space is the harshest imaginable place for living things—the ongoing earthbound large-scale testbed for space farming, EDEN [PDF], operates out of a German station in Antarctica. Massa makes the point that it would be a pretty sad experience for a space traveler to have a plant failure on, say, day 70, and have to resort to warming up packs of processed food while they begin to plant all over again.
By learning more about plants, NASA hopes to advance long-duration space exploration, first to the moon and eventually to Mars. “We really need to learn a lot,” Massa says. “The behavior of water and gas flow changes so much in microgravity, and fluid physics is one of the most important things to test. We’re still trying to figure out the best way to water plants in space.”
They’ll want to sort that out before we get to our moon base.
This post was updated on 25 September 2019.
EDEN-ISS: Substantial Vegetable Harvest In Antarctica
“In just nine and a half months, we produced a total of 268 kilograms of food on just 12.5 square meters, including 67 kilograms of cucumbers, 117 kilograms of lettuce and 50 kilograms of tomatoes.”
EDEN-ISS ©Hanno Müller, AWI
Posted by Almut Otto | Aug 24, 2019 | Tags: Antarctic Neumayer III Station, Antarctica, DLR, greenhouses
No, luckily the climate in Antarctica is still inhospitable. And this is precisely why the German Aerospace Center (DLR) set up the EDEN-ISS greenhouse there in 2018. This is because food production of the future and future space missions are being researched in the immediate vicinity of the German Antarctic Neumayer III Station. In the meantime, the winter crew from the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI), including DLR researcher Dr Paul Zabel, has spent a year surrounded by constant ice. The team presented the results on 23 August: There was an unexpectedly rich harvest. According to Zabel:
“In just nine and a half months, we produced a total of 268 kilograms of food on just 12.5 square meters, including 67 kilograms of cucumbers, 117 kilograms of lettuce and 50 kilograms of tomatoes.”
EDEN-ISS ©Hanno Müller, AWI
Before his trip, by the way, Zabel had been smart enough to look into artificial vegetable cultivation in Dutch greenhouses. Zabel adds:
“The taste of the fresh vegetables and their smell left a lasting impression on the winter crew and had a visibly positive effect on the team’s mood throughout the long period of isolation.
A correlation that is now also being researched from a psychological perspective.
Lower energy consumption than expected
Additionally, the scientists were surprised that they needed much less energy than they had initially expected. The average power consumption during the analog Antarctic mission was 0.8 kilowatts per square meter of cultivated area. It was consequently less than half as much as previously assumed for aerospace greenhouses, which were estimated at 2.1 kilowatts per square meter.
“This is an important aspect for a subsequent space venture and gives us confidence about the future of this idea”.
… says Project Manager Dr. Daniel Schubert from the DLR Institute of Space Systems. Aside from that, he stresses the potential and useful addition to space food that can be supplied by the earth:
“In one year in the Antarctic we have seen very clearly how enough food can be produced in a very small space in order to supplement the food of a crew of six by a third with freshly grown food.”
High workload should be reduced
Notwithstanding this, the researchers still see some potential for development. Because in order to save valuable astronaut time, the amount of work required for support and maintenance has to be significantly reduced in the future. Zabel needed an average of three to four hours a day in order to cultivate the plants:
” I spent about two thirds of my time operating and maintaining the greenhouse technology, another third on sowing, harvesting and maintenance. In the future, a space greenhouse needs to significantly reduce the amount of an astronaut’s valuable time.”
On top of that, the time required for experiments was about four to five hours per day. The aeroponic cultivation system, i.e. nutrient solution without soil, enabled the plants to flourish successfully. Some pumps caused problems in the intervening period and the biofilm in the nutrient tanks were unexpectedly high, yet these problems could be remedied.
New EDEN-ISS designed for the Falcon 9 rocket
Based on the results and experiences of the EDEN-ISS project, a new design concept for a space greenhouse has now been developed. This greenhouse is fairly compact in its design so that it can be launched aboard a Falcon 9 rocket. At the same time, it is expandable and large enough to provide sufficient food for the astronauts on the moon or on Mars. “The area used for cultivation is around 30 square meters, almost three times the size of the Antarctic greenhouse container. Using this system, around 90 kilograms of fresh food could be grown per month, which corresponds to half a kilogram of fresh vegetables per day and per astronaut if six astronauts are present,” Schubert explains.
The concept may also be combined with a biofilter system (C.R.O.P.). Its purpose is to produce a fertilizer solution for plant cultivation that is able to be utilized from biowaste and urine directly. This makes the greenhouse concept almost a fully bio-regenerative life support system for future habitats. Prof. Hansjörg Dittus, DLR Executive Board member responsible for space research and technology, elaborates further:
“The newly proposed concept for a space greenhouse is an invaluable foundation on which we intend to further expand our research work.”
EDEN-ISS is open to research teams worldwide
Following Paul Zabel’s return to Germany, the Antarctic greenhouse was initially in “sleep mode”. Previously, the DLR team had maintained all systems on site in January 2019 and completely overhauled the container. The Bremen researchers then woke the system up from its sleep at the beginning of May using a remote control system and powered it up again. A seed sown at an earlier stage began to flourish.
“This step served to test another space scenario. Because a provisional greenhouse is expected to arrive before the astronauts and ideally start its operation remotely.
… DLR researcher Schubert explains and he adds: “The test run was a complete success. Now the current AWI winter crew is continuing to operate the greenhouse with strong support from the Bremen Control Center, from where we monitor as much as we possibly can from a distance. The procedures developed last year are currently proving their worth in minimizing the crew’s workload and simplifying procedures as far as practicable”.
The greenhouse is also now available to various research groups worldwide who are interested in conducting plant cultivation experiments in the Antarctic.
“As one of the first new collaboration partners, the American space agency NASA has already sent us original NASA salad seeds, which are also cultivated on the International Space Station ISS and now thrive here in Antarctica,” Schubert adds.
Findings are interesting for global food production
The frozen continent of Antarctica is one of the most exciting research regions in the world. “It is primarily here that we gather data on global climate change and Antarctic biodiversity. However, the greenhouse is an excellent example of how we can conduct research at Neumayer Station III on other important questions for the future. After all, we have a lot in common with space travel when we travel to regions that are hostile to humans in order to gain new insights. At the same time, the permanent supply of fresh fruit and vegetables has a very positive side effect on our winter crew this year once again,” says Prof. Antje Boetius, Director of the Alfred Wegener Institute, who, during her stay at the station, was able to convince herself of the wonderful flavor of a juicy giant radish from the greenhouse. The cultivation of vegetables is consequently also interesting for future missions by the research icebreaker Polarstern.
Moreover, global food production is one of the central challenges facing society in the 21st century. An ever-increasing world population and the simultaneous upheavals caused by climate change call for new ways of cultivating crops even in climatically unfavorable regions. A self-contained greenhouse enables harvests that are independent of weather, sun and season, as well as lower water consumption and the elimination of pesticides and insecticides for deserts and regions with low temperatures, as well as for space missions to the moon and to Mars. In the EDEN-ISS project, such a model greenhouse for the future is undergoing long-term testing under extreme Antarctic conditions.
EDEN-ISS partners
EDEN-ISS is developed by DLR in cooperation with the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Center for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) as part of a winter mission at the German Neumayer Station III in Antarctica. Numerous other international partners are working together as part of a research consortium under the leadership of DLR with the aim of ensuring that the Antarctic greenhouse functions properly. These include Wageningen University and Research (Netherlands), Airbus Defense and Space (Germany), LIQUIFER Systems Group (Austria), National Research Council (Italy), University of Guelph (Canada), Enginsoft (Italy), Thales Alenia Space Italia (Italy), AeroCosmo (Italy), Heliospectra (Sweden), Limerick Institute of Technology (Ireland), Telespazio (Italy) and the University of Florida (USA). The project is funded by the European Research Framework Program Horizon 2020 under project number 636501.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Almut Otto
Almut Otto is a writer and has over 30 years of know-how in the communications industry. She learned the trade of journalism from scratch in a daily newspaper and in a special interest magazine. After studying communication sciences in Munich, she worked as an international PR manager in the textile, shoe, outdoor and IT industries for a long time. For some years now, she has been concentrating more on her journalistic background. As a passionate outdoor and water sports enthusiast - her hobbies include windsurfing, kitesurfing, SUP boarding, sailing and snowboarding - she is particularly interested in keeping the oceans clean and shaping a sustainable future. In addition, she is always fascinated by the latest developments from the world's hardware and software laboratories.
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
Scientists Are Gene-Editing Tomato Plants For The International Space Station
Using CRISPR technology, California researchers have developed a tinier tomato plant for growth in space
Martha Orozco-Cárdenas/University of California, Riverside
Using CRISPR technology, California researchers have developed a tinier tomato plant for growth in space.
May 3rd, 2019
by Sam Bloch
Go tiny or get out. Scientists at the University of California, Riverside, have gene-edited tomatoes to have tinier leaves and stems, which could make them more a productive crop for farmers with limited space to grow food. That could be, for instance, a small-scale farmer who thinks that gene-edited plants are still organic. It could be an indoor, vertical farmer, who’s got a whole lot of height but not a lot of acreage. Or it could be a space farmer—thrusting utilitarian, hearty vegetative matter into the harshest conditions known to man.
And that’s exactly what’s happening. The university announced Thursday that Robert Jinkerson, an engineering professor, and Martha Orozco-Cárdenas, director of the university’s Plant Transformation Research Center, have landed a two-year, $800,000 grant from NASA’s space health wing to make those tomatoes grow in space—specifically, for astronauts on the International Space Station, who subsist on what’s largely a not-so-fresh diet.
“When I first saw those tiny tomatoes growing in Martha’s lab, I just knew we had to get them onto the space station,” Jinkerson wrote.
One astronaut who’d grown zucchini and sunflowers refused to eat his, because he considered them crew members.
So why is NASA keen to get these particular tomatoes in space? Orozco-Cárdenas used CRISPR technology to gene-edit the plants in such a way that the size of the fruit would stay the same, but the overall leaves and stems shrank. Without all that biomass, the tiny tomatoes produce fruit more quickly than a conventional counterpart—or, put another way, they take less time to grow the same amount. Additionally, with real estate at a premium on the space station, you can squeeze in more plants if you reduce their overall size.
Like a lot of innovations in farming technology, a significant part of the project’s goal is to increase efficiency. These days, that impulse is wrapped in climate-friendly rhetoric. The typical line goes something like this: There will be 9 billion people on the planet by 2050, and with only a limited amount of arable land left for farming, farmers need to max out the land they have. In the release, Orozco-Cárdenas said her goal, all along, has been to develop plants that could “feed a growing population on less farmland.”
But plants that grow quickly, on less energy, would be great in space, too. As our Jesse Hirsch reported for Modern Farmer, on the International Space Station, arable “land” consists mostly of a plastic bag shuttled between windowsills. Growing food in space, Hirsch reported, potentially represents major savings for a notoriously underfunded agency. Sending food to the space station costs roughly $10,000 a pound, and there’s a heavy emphasis on densely caloric, shelf-stable foods. Astronauts devour fresh produce upon arrival.
Time was, farming in space was unthinkable. The first space plants—flowers that were related to cabbage and mustard—were grown by Soviet cosmonauts in 1982, but the yield was too small to be food. Thereafter, when American astronauts grew vegetables, they were largely academic experiments that quantified the effects of zero gravity on plant growth, and the viability of different kinds of artificial light. One astronaut who’d grown zucchini and sunflowers refused to eat his, because he considered them crew members.
Using CRISPR technology, California researchers have developed a tinier tomato plant for growth in space.
The first crop of space veggies was harvested in 2014—heads of burgundy-red lettuce that were tucked in grow rooms, officially referred to as Vegetable Production Systems, or Veggies. The greens grew in “plant pillows,” under red, blue, and green LED lights. At 14.5 inches deep, the system was, at the time, the largest farm in the history of space.
More recently, the crew aboard the space station grew batches of mixed greens—mizuna, red romaine, and Tokyo Bekana cabbage—in two Veggies. Some of the harvest was consumed in space, while the rest was brought home for testing, according to NASA. That’s similar to other space farming experiments, like the Tomatosphere, which is an effort to cultivate seeds in space, and let schoolchildren grow them back on earth.
As part of the NASA funding, Riverside scientists will modify the tomatoes to speed up photosynthesis—which, besides helping the plants grow faster, will also replace carbon dioxide in the space station with breathable air. The money will also go towards creating space-like grow rooms back on earth and to conduct more tests. Also? They want to make the plants even tinier.
Gene-engineered tomatoes—even those with less biomass—haven’t yet caught on with vertical farmers, largely because they need more infrastructure, like a trellis or cage, than leafy greens. But for aspiring space farmers, the benefits of growing tomatoes may transcend mere utility. To quote Alexandra Whitmire of the NASA Human Research Program in the Huffington Post, growing plants in space could raise crew morale. “Plants can indeed enhance long-duration missions in isolated, confined and extreme environments — environments that are artificial and deprived of nature.” Buck up, astronaut: You’ve got fresh tomatoes!