High-Level Project Summary
The ''Food On Mars'' is an agricultural production project based on hydroponics using a superabsorbent polymer as a substrate. This project will use a retractable vertical growing system with an onboard control box using sensors. The lighting of the plants will be provided by magenta LEDs and the darkness will be simulated by an opaque veil. This system will take into account the use of part of the astronauts' urine treated as fertilizer and water for the development. This will allow a great reduction of the quantity of water but also a contribution of nutrient for the plants.
Link to Project "Demo"
Link to Final Project
Detailed Project Description
The "Food On Mars" project is based on a hydroponic system with closed circuit culture. This project allows to cultivate a large variety of plants once in Space during a manned space mission. Thus this project has for first utility to offer fresh products to the astronauts in particular in the perspective of a mission on Mars.
This project is totally modular and allows to build a culture environment in a fast way. It is composed of two main bases connected by cylindrical rods.
The lower base contains all the control box of the system. In the middle of this vertical system, several platforms are placed to form a tower that will host the various cultures. At the level of each platform, there will be several cavities that will accommodate each a seed and a super absorbent polymer.
This polymer will allow an efficient cultivation of the products with a planned use of the urine as fertilizer.
The advantage of this project is its adaptability and its modularity. It will
also allow a water recovery thanks to the hydrophobic wall.
Space Agency Data
The video on YouTube gave us a great insight about the whole challenge. Our first thought about the solution we wanted to develop just came after watching it. Then, the two PDFs has given us a whole lot of data that we used...all of that NASA data about Space Culture were just outstanding when deeply understood.
With all that resources along with some other personal researches, we developed our project just like we wanted to.
Hackathon Journey
NASA Space Apps is a one of a kind experience for us as the challenges are designed to test our ability to solve some of the issues related to space and technology in general. Our team chose ''Food on Mars'' because Mars as we know it, has somehow some of Earth' characteristics and capable of supporting life. Being able to grow food on Mars will be an astounding achievement for the history of mankind in the pursuit of discovering planet and it will play a great role in savings for future Mars exploration missions. Besides, astronaut travelling over there will be able to eat natural and healthy food...and we really want to be part of that. To develop our project we used most of the data giving to use responding with the challenge we chose and worked on them thanks to our problem solving ability. It wasn't easy as we faced some challenges and overcame them thanks to team work. A special thank to our mentor and lead Space Apps Prudence Ayivi. We are grateful for all your insights and the different touches you brought to our project.
References
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lM3uaR0dltQ&list=PL37Yhb2zout05pUjr7OoRFpTNroq_wd9f&index=8
https://www.nasa.gov/content/growing-plants-in-space
https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/veggie_fact_sheet_508.pdf
https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/advanced-plant-habitat.pdf
https://asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/sciences/food-production/default.asp
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroponie
https://blog.defi-ecologique.com/urine-agriculture/
https://www.lemonde.fr/videos/video/2020/08/12/comment-l-urine-humaine-pourrait-aider-les-agriculteurs-du-futur_6048804_1669088.html
https://www.futura-sciences.com/planete/questions-reponses/eau-fonctionne-culture-hydroponique-4828/
Autocad 3D(for 3D design)
Pixarbay(for free images)
Tags
#Hydroponie #Superabsorbent_polymer #Mars #SpaceCulture