Star Spores

Universal Event | Have seeds will travel!

Awards & Nominations

Star Spores has received the following awards and nominations. Way to go!

Global Nominee

VAST (Vertical Aeroponics for Space Travel)

High-Level Project Summary

VAST is a vertical aeroponics system capable of supporting dozens of leafy green plants in order to supplement astronaut diets during long-term space flight. We chose to support lettuces as studies have shown astronauts mostly crave salad vegetables after returning from space. Our system is enclosed in a collapsible plastic tent and designed to be plumbed into the spacecraft so that O2 and CO2 can be delivered and extracted from the system. The enclosed design allows for a miniature greenhouse effect, promoting plant growth and health. We chose aeroponics for this system as it is low maintenance, clean and resource efficient.

Link to Project "Demo"

https://1drv.ms/p/s!AskdBMdVywDRowGFzmXXdMvF1qM-?e=r7CRwI

Link to Final Project

https://1drv.ms/b/s!AskdBMdVywDRowT_-ovd-y1zmtBE?e=cGvsOe

Detailed Project Description

VAST is a modular aeroponic system with collapsible components designed to be simple to use and maintain, while providing fresh food. The System consists of a growth tube, a mist rod, two end plates, an outer casing, and associated support systems

Plants are attached to the growth tube circular slots by coconut husk mesh patches, which come pre-embedded with the desired seeds
Water and air are pumped into the system via one endplate
An internal rod containing spray heads is fitted within the growth tube, responsible for misting nutrient-enriched water onto each plant’s root system
The other endplate reclaims excess moisture as it flows through the system and expels oxygenated air
An outer clear plastic tube encases the system, and can be collapsed to access the plants (similar to the VEGGIE outer casing)

When not in use the system breaks down into smaller easily stowable components:

The outer clear plastic tube collapses like a "slinky" and can be stored flat with other items
The grow lights, nutrition & pump system, and associated tubes and cables are all stored in the inner grow tube when not in use
The end plates unscrew from the inner growth tube to be stored separately
Plant seeds are pre-embedded into small pieces of coconut husk mesh, resulting in a small, lightweight and easily stackable plant medium

The system runs on low voltage, simple and off the shelf components to minimise technical issues.

VAST was designed using a tool called SketchUp, which allowed us to create a 3D model in a relatively short amount of time. We wanted to design a plant growth solution that was simple, efficient and easily accessible, and we believe that we were able to achieve these goals. To summarise its benefits, VAST:

Contains cheap and easily resourced components
Results in a high yield of plants while maintaining a low energy and spatial footprint
Has both space and terrestrial applications (e.g. could be used in residential homes)
Can be harvested on an ongoing basis/as required, as opposed to requiring scheduled harvesting and system resets
Serves as an aesthetic addition to the crew habitat resulting in increased serotonin levels

If we were to continue working on VAST, we would like to incorporate a subsystem containing mushrooms in order to consume the waste created by the plants while also providing an additional nutritious food source for the astronauts.

Space Agency Data

Our team primarily referenced NASA's VEGGIE and Advanced Plant Habitat systems, the MELiSSA Project, and vertical aeroponic systems. We were particular interested in the following details for each project.

Nutrient delivery
Growth medium
Food yield
Power usage
Size and Portability
Safety
Materials used

We took inspiration from each project and applied it to our own in the following ways.

VEGGIE : Collapsible translucent outer casing, utilisation of space vehicle systems for air processing
Advanced Plant Habitat: Automated watering solution, active water reclamation, automated monitoring of water and nutrient levels
MELiSSA: Closed loop system (not addressed by current design)

Hackathon Journey

The Space Apps experience has been very rewarding for our team. As a bunch of IT nerds who like to consider ourselves amateur engineers, it was great being able to flex our collective muscles on a project that was outside our comfort zone. While we didn’t have a significant amount of knowledge in the area of biology or horticulture, we were amazed at how much we were able to learn in such a short amount of time, and now have a good understanding of the systems currently being worked on to provide plant-based nutrition to our astronauts.

As we were coming into this challenge without an adequate amount of prior knowledge, we spent the first half of the day researching the systems that are currently being tested for long-term space flight, such as VEGGIE, APH, and MELiSSA. At this stage, we were hoping to focus on mushrooms being the core plant to grow due to their high nutritional value, low resource requirements, and potential applications outside of being a food source. However we soon found out through our research that mushrooms are considerably difficult to contain in space due to how efficient they are at reproduction. We became concerned that we would not be able to properly contain the spores in a system that we only had two days to design, so we decided to instead focus on an easier (and more palatable) plant; lettuce. While disappointed in having to ditch the mushrooms (of which we drew our team namesake), we realised that future iterations of VAST could include mushrooms as a secondary system to process plant waste, which is an issue our current design does not address.

After achieving a core understanding of the task at hand, we began designing a basic vertical aeroponics system in SketchUp. Being able to refer to and continually improve upon a visual representation of our system was beneficial for our team as we are all practical learners. We made a number of revisions in relation to the unit’s size, component shapes, and lighting design based on the input of each of our team members.

This challenge definitely enabled us to stretch our minds and think outside of the box, and we’d like to thank NASA and other supporting organisations for giving us the opportunity to participate.