High-Level Project Summary
The project aims to grow vegetables in International Space Station (ISS). It will supply green vegetables as part of the astronauts’ diet. The pre-package food might be sufficient to provide nutrients to them, but might lack of some fibers. Thus, devising an apparatus that can supply green plants in long term is essential to the health of ISS people. The environment of ISS such as zero gravity and stronger cosmic ray might alter the growing conditions for plants that usually grow on earth. Some measures are taken to overcome the gravity issue and the light source. We might also utilize the cosmic ray and the space environment to generate vegetables or plants that possess better traits.
Link to Project "Demo"
Link to Final Project
Detailed Project Description
The vegetables will be grown in a chamber-like container. Within the container, there are numerous growing cells. They are hexagon in shape, forming geometry like beehives. This will accommodate as much as vegetables as possible. Within each cell, there will be vermiculite serving as the growing medium. Vermiculite is light weight material and absorb water well. It enables the water to be absorbed by the plants. On top of the vermiculite, lay a thin layer of sponge to maintain water in position so that latter would not go around in the ISS. The vermiculite is also kept moist by doing this.
Plant nutrients are added into the water at certain time points, depending on the usage of the vegetables or plants. There is an inlet in the growing cells to infuse the water and nutrients. Carbon dioxide is pumped into the chamber space when necessary.
As for light source, plant chlorophyll absorb red and blue light for photosynthesis. It has been tested in an experiment that the LED bulb from BaShuGuang company(manufactured in Shen Zheng, China) can sustain the plant growth during the night. Thus, we utilize the LED bulb as the light source for the vegetables. The duration for the light might be adjusted because different plants require different "day-length".
We propose to plant lettuce, cabbage, tomatoes, kailan(cabbage mustard), and bean sprouts in the growing chamber, These vegetables do not require so much water. As a side activity, the astronauts might might make kimchi or pickles with the vegetables grown. The kimchi that will be made, if successful, could be brought back to earth and analyzed, in term of their nutrition values and the changes caused by the space environment. The texture and flavor are noted down, too.
Space Agency Data
The information under Have seeds will travel Challenge(within NASA page) was literally studied to come out with our solutions. The successful experiences are adapted.
Hackathon Journey
It is a mind blowing to participate in this project. None of the the team members have been space before. We could only use the knowledge in the Plant class we attended before to simulate the real environments. We have also read through how astronauts from different parts of the world plant the vegetables. Personally, we would like to acknowledge James' plant professor, Dr. Janice Glime for her advice in formulating the solution in this project.
References
Janice M. Glime. Botanical Interface. 2001. Michigan Technological University
Tags
#Plant #Space
Global Judging
This project has been submitted for consideration during the Judging process.