High-Level Project Summary
A dismountable rotating cylindrical system with three stores was designed to fulfill external growing conditions using P.O.N.D.S as water and nutrition delivery system for our crops. It can be easily installed, with a structure made of carbon fiber offering strength and durability. It includes a self-diagnosis system for the plants that uses cameras and a visual database that provides crucial information about them. Our garden offers efficiency of space and robustness by having a vertical design . The first candidates for our garden are pepper (Capsicum annuum) and kale (Brassica olaracea) because of their high content of antioxidants, zeaxantin and luthein respectively.
Link to Project "Demo"
Link to Final Project
Detailed Project Description
DROPDOWN GARDEN TO MARS 1.0
Dropdown Garden is a vertical garden that has three stages with the following characteristics:
- Weight : 7 kg
- Height : 120 cm
- Radius of each cilinder : 30 cm
- 4 axes which allow rotation of each cilinder
Materials
- Estructure made of carbon fiber
Each cilinder includes
- 9 P.O.N.D.S.
- Control cameras
- Thermostats
- Fans
- A removable and flexible cover to harvest plants
How do P.O.N.D.S. look?
Each P.O.N.D.S (exisiting technology) will carry seeds of our two main candidates crops : pepper (Capsicum annuum) and kale (Brassica olaracea), there are control cameras on the top of each big cilinder that will be connected to an interface, bringing information about the plants health considering color and shape as the main characteristics to be evaluated.
Having each cilinder arranged vertically allows the crew to grow different crops and independency of culture and harvest time.
We hope to achieve the creation of this garden and implement it with the best exisiting technology to make it to the next Mars mission, bringing pepper and kale to protect the crew's health from radiation effects. Also in short term we want to develop this self-diagnosis app (PlantsDoc) make it available for farmers around the world, especially those who grow plants in green houses.
Space Agency Data
- Vegetable Production System (Veggie) https://techport.nasa.gov/view/10498
- A Deployable Salad Crop Production System for Lunar Habitats (https://techport.nasa.gov/file/64865)
- A Low Equivalent System Mass Plant Growth Unit for Space Exploration (https://techport.nasa.gov/file/64866)
- Concept for Sustained Plant Production on ISS Using Veggie Capillary Mat Rooting System (https://techport.nasa.gov/file/64861)
- Operational Evaluation of VEGGIE Food Production System in the Habitat Demonstration Unit (https://techport.nasa.gov/file/64862)
- P.O.N.D.S , https://techshot.com/aerospace/technology/ponds/
Hackathon Journey
This has been a very enriching and exciting experience for us. We all got different ideas at the beginning and we started reuniting them to create our final desing. It was interesting to see how each of us would see the challenge from different perspectives because of our different backgrounds. We learned that there is a very important advancement on what is referred to have seeds and plants that will travel in space but that still needs more improvement to assure that the future tripulations will get several advantages from growing plants inside the cabin.
We chose this challenge because as now, we have experienced how important is to make space efficient and apply technology on different levels to achieve quality and efficiency. We became even more inspired by the recent crew that flew on Dragon 9, it made us feel that we can actually be part of this making true our childhood dreams, like being astronauts (Pamela), bringing microalgae biotechnology into the space (Daniela and Mariela), and using music at its most profound and complex levels to enhace life in space (Affonso).
We resolved these challenges by listening to each other and helping us to help develop our ideas in this hackaton.
We would like to thank our families, parents and partners. And we especially want to thank the little ones in our family, because in them we see the biggest hopes for us to keep working on finding innovative solutions for nowadays challenges, not only by bringing knowledge but by being good people.
References
- Bugbee, B. (2004). NUTRIENT MANAGEMENT IN RECIRCULATING HYDROPONIC CULTURE. Acta Horticulturae, (648), 99–112. doi:10.17660/actahortic.2004.648
- SanGiovanni, J.P., and Neuringer, M., “The putative role of lutein and zeaxanthin as protective agents against age-related macular degeneration: Promise of molecular genetics for guiding mechanistic and translational research in the field,” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition Vol. 96, 2012.
- Luteína y Zeaxantina: ¿en qué alimentos conseguirlos?, North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services Food and Drug Protection Division. http://www.ncagr.gov/fooddrug/espanol/documents/luteinayzeaxanthina.pdf
Tags
#biotechnology #spacescience #plantsinspace
Global Judging
This project has been submitted for consideration during the Judging process.