|
 | | Feeding the Explorers of Tomorrow | | |
When humans embark on long duration missions such as the establishment of permanent bases on the Lunar surface or travel to Mars for exploration, they
will continue to need food, water and air. For these long duration missions it may not be economical or practical to resupply basic life support
elements from Earth. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the space community will need to develop systems to produce food,
purify their water supply, regenerate oxygen and remove undesirable components of the air. A life support system that would perform these regenerative
functions is included in the goals of the NASA Advanced Life Support Program. Such a system would be a tightly controlled and partially-closed loop
system in which the growth of crop plants would contribute to the life support functions. The natural function of plants would provide food and
contribute to water purification, air revitalization and even the processing of waste materials. All systems would have to operate under the
restrictions of minimizing volume, mass, energy, and labor.
Research on human life support began in the 1950s with oxygen regeneration using algae. NASA became interested in a Bioregenerative Life Support System
effort in the late 1970s in order to support long-term space missions.
Since then the Advanced Life Support (ALS) program at NASA has examined growing plants for food and oxygen regeneration and use of physio-chemical and
biological methods to process waste into usable resources. At the Johnson Space Center (JSC) a number of tests have been completed in which human test
subjects were included to determine the efficiency, reliability, and effectiveness of regenerable systems for long duration missions. Scientists and
engineers at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) examine the bioregenerative aspects of ALS work including crop production and biological waste processing in
an integrated manner.
The philosophy is to use biological subsystems to recycle material through an ALS system. Humans take in oxygen, food, and water and expel carbon
dioxide and organic waste. Plants utilize carbon dioxide, produce food, release oxygen, and purify water. In a process termed resource recovery, the
inedible plant material and human waste are degraded by microorganisms to recycle nutrients for plants.
Research Areas
- Plant Research: Crop Production, Nutrient Delivery Systems, Lighting Technologies, Plant growth regulators.
- Microbial Research: Microbial Ecology, Solid waste bioprocessing, and Graywater bioprocessing.
- Technology Development: Data acquisition, low pressure greenhouse, bioreactor design and development, database development, predictive modeling.
- Mars Astrobiology: How plants can grow at low pressures and in simulated Mars soils
- Space Flight Experiments: a list of acronyms.
- Support: Organic analytical chemistry
- Education Outreach: Interactions with students from grade-school, high school, colleges, grad schools, as well as teachers, faculty, the public, other government agencies.
Research Partners
|
