You can grow Vegitables in Moon/ Mars
NASA
designs Greenhouse for other Planets
Washington: An
inflatable greenhouse has been designed by a team of NASA scientists which
astronauts could one day use to grow fresh food and produce oxygen on other planets
like Mars or Moon.
The
prototype involves an inflatable, deployable greenhouse to support plant and
crop production for nutrition, air revitalisation, water recycling and waste
recycling.
Though astronauts are successfully growing plants and
vegetables aboard the International Space Station (ISS), but NASA wants to
develop long-term methods that could help sustain pioneers working in deep
space.
Ray
Wheeler, lead scientist at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida said, "The
new approach uses plants to scrub carbon dioxide, while providing food and
oxygen."
Wheeler added that astronauts exhale carbon dioxide, which
is then introduced into the greenhouse, and the plants then generate oxygen
through photosynthesis.
The water cycle begins with water that is brought along or
found at the lunar or Martian landing site.
Water is oxygenated, given nutrient salts, and it
continuously flows across the root zone of the plants and returned to the
storage system.
Tests involving the Prototype Lunar Greenhouse at the University
of Arizona in the US have included determining what plants, seeds or other
materials should be taken along to make the system work on the Moon or Mars.
The US space agency said, learning what to take and what
to gather on site will be crucial for living on distant locations. Using
available resources located or grown on site is a practice called in-situ
resource utilisation, or ISRU.
NASA scientists and engineers are developing systems to
harness resources such as water that should be available in certain areas of
the lunar or martian surface to support missions lasting for months or years.
Gene
Giacomelli, professor at the University of Arizona said, "We are mimicking
what the plants would have if they were on Earth and make use of these
processes for life support."
Giacomelli said, "The entire system of the lunar
greenhouse does represent, in a small way, the biological systems that are here
on Earth."
He said that the next big step is to use additional lunar
greenhouse units for specialised testing to ensure the system being developed
will adequately support a crew of astronauts working on the Moon or Mars.
He added, "We will develop computer models to simulate
what we are doing to automatically control the environment and provide a
constant level of oxygen."
The prototypes now being developed are cylindrical - 18
feet long and more than 8 feet in diameter and were built by Sadler Machine
Company, one of the project partners.
According to NASA, to protect from radiation in space, the
greenhouse units would likely be buried under surface soil or regolith thus
requiring specialised lighting.
Wheeler added, "We have been successful in using
electric LED (light emitting diode) lighting to grow plants. We also have
tested hybrids using both natural and artificial lighting."
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