How does your garden grow…if you’re on the Moon or Mars?
Answering that question is on the scientific menu of researchers at the University of Arizona (UA) Controlled Environment Agriculture Center (CEAC). They are demonstrating that plants from Earth could be grown without soil on the Moon or on the red planet.
Future space explorers can have their extraterrestrial dining table loaded with potatoes, peanuts, tomatoes, peppers and other vegetables.
The research team has built a prototype lunar greenhouse in the CEAC Extreme Climate Lab at the university’s Campus Agricultural Center.
That greenhouse represents the last 18 feet of one of several tubular structures that would be part of a proposed lunar base. The tubes would be buried beneath the lunar surface – necessary to protect the plants and astronauts from deadly solar flares, micrometeorites and cosmic rays.
The membrane-covered module can be collapsed to a 4-foot-wide disk for space travel. It contains water-cooled sodium vapor lamps and long envelopes that would be loaded with seeds, ready to sprout hydroponically.
Once “planted” on the Moon or Mars, the greenhouse can be up and operating within minutes.
South Pole research
The research team is shaping the space greenhouse like a CEAC food-production system that has been operating at the South Pole for the past six years.
The South Pole Growth Chamber — where many ideas now used in the lunar greenhouse were developed — was also designed and fabricated by Sadler Machine Co. It provides fresh food to the South Pole research station, which is physically cut off from the outside world for six to eight months each year.
The growth chamber provides a valuable psychological boost, in addition to food production, for scientists who overwinter at the station.
NASA is funding that research under a $70,000 Ralph Steckler Space Grant Colonization Research and Technology Development Opportunity. That grant was obtained by CEAC with help from UA’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory.
The Steckler grants are designed to support research that could lead to space colonization, a better understanding of the lunar environment and creation of technologies that will support space colonies.
CEAC now is applying for Phase II of this grant, which would provide an additional $225,000 for two years.
Urban center application
The UA researchers and Sadler Machine are collaborating with two Italian firms on this project: Thales Alenia Space, a company that builds hardware for the International Space Station, and Aero Sekur, which builds inflatable structures.
UA’s principal investigator on the work is Gene Giacomelli. “On another planet, you need to minimize your labor, recycle all you can and operate as efficiently as possible,” he said.
Giacomelli said the space research also could lead to plant colonization in another traditionally hostile environment – large urban centers right here on Mother Earth.
“There’s great interest in providing locally grown, fresh food in cities, for growing food right where masses of people are living,” Giacomelli said. “It’s the idea of growing high-quality fresh food that only has to be transported very short distances. There also would be a sense of agriculture returning to the everyday lives of urban dwellers.”
By LD/CSE