Young Space Technology Designers (YSTD)

Antalya | Have seeds will travel!

Greenhouse for Space and Mars Conditions

High-Level Project Summary

What is Our Project? Our project is a greenhouse model that will continuously provide fresh vegetables to astronauts.What Does Our Project Do? Our project will allow astronauts to be fed fresh vegetables during their mission.Why Is Our Project Necessary? Longer-term space missions can be performed, as our product can provide a constant flow of food to astronauts going on space missions. Longer tasks will also increase the efficiency of tasks.

Link to Project "Demo"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqlAxYGmGno

Link to Final Project

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpWCIlQ6D3o

Detailed Project Description

How We Addressed This Challenge

With the developed crop production system, the nutritional needs of a crew of 4-6 people on a transit mission to Mars and Earth will be supported. The system is designed to be attached to the spacecraft. There will be covers on the bottom and top of the module, so that it can connect with other parts, and when the spacecraft lands on the surface of Mars, there will be a door next to it for entry and exit. The module interior will be insulated, and it will save heat and energy. The module will have an air lock on the side so that there will be no air exchange between the indoor and outdoor environment and the entrances and exits will be provided from here.

We also consider the potential effects of working in the deep space radiation environment and exposure to high-energy Galactic Cosmic Radiation (GCR) and Solar Particle Events (SPE), taking into account the transition environment. The name we give to this crop production system is "Space Greenhouse"

Greenhouse design:

The space greenhouse will be a vertical cylindrical system with shelves and vertical farming will be done. The shelves will be in the form of a ring and there will be a cylindrical space inside the cylinder. The size of the module will be cylindrical with a radius of 4 meters and a height of 11 meters. In the middle of the space there will be a ladder so that the astronaut can observe the plants.

Shelves design:

There will be robotic arms under the shelves, which will collect the plants and mushrooms that mature in this way, and the arms will be supported by artificial intelligence. The height of the shelves will vary according to the needs of the plants and will consist of 24 shelves. The shelves will be manufactured from composite material, thus providing strength and flexibility. There will be a separate shelf for each plant and the depth of each shelf will be adjusted specifically for that plant. There will be an air filter inside the module and the air quality will. Shelves will be railed and space will be saved. Each shelf will have a device that measures humidity, temperature, soil pH, and oxygen in the air. Shelves will be locked and suspended for vibrations that will be kept stable. There will be adjustable distance bars to prevent the shelves from colliding with each other. Shelves will be irrigated agriculture, perforated pipes will pass under the shelves, and above the pipes there will be holes for rock wool and plants to enter. The pipes used in the shelves will be thin so that the water will flow without gravity thanks to the pressure. Plants suitable for irrigated agriculture on some shelves will be prepared accordingly in order to be more efficient and faster. Since the water will be constantly circulating in the pipes, it will be connected to the water purification device and in this way the water will remain clean. On other grounded shelves, on the other hand, there will be a thin layer of rock wool outside the pipes through which the drip pipes will pass through the soil, and it will absorb the water so that the soil will be moistened and the top of the soil will be covered with a fine mesh so that the soil does not fly away in a gravity-free environment.

Greenhouse landing gear:

The module will have its own landing legs that can be separated from the rocket, a parachute system, and thrusters

In the table there are plants to be planted in the greenhouse, vitamin and minaral values.

How We Developed This Project

While doing our project, we considered how the place where the plants will grow will be affected by gravity, what minerals the plants contain, what nutrients the astronauts need first and which plants are easier to grow.

Space Agency Data

How We Use Space Agency Data

NASA Data We Use

Have Seeds Will Travel! Challenge Video has guided us on what to watch out for when dealing with difficulty.

Growing Plant in Space | NASA the data on this page has shown us to learn about previous research on growing plants in space and what we can do differently.

Veggie | NASAfacts this PDF provided us with detailed information about Veggie and showed us the ways we could improve our own system.

Advanced Plant Habitat this PDF gave us information about Advanced Plant Habitat and what features we can use in this system.

Canadian Space Agency (CSA) Resources We Use

The website offers information on Food production (growing healthy food in space, deep space food challenge in remote areas, etc.)

Some of the photos used were taken: Food production (Web Site).

Hackathon Journey

In a word, it was fascinating. This does not mean that we have never had moments of despair. We thought that we wouldn't have enough time, that we couldn't do it well enough. But each time, our team instill hope again and we continued the fight.

To give importance to the ideas of others when choosing a challenge; We learned to work as a team, to respect each other, to be open to criticism, and to express ideas without offending others. While producing solutions for the Challenge, we learned to be creative, to produce innovative ideas, and what to do when faced with a problem. The most important thing Space Apps Challenge has taught us is to never give up. Besides, let's not forget the information we learned while researching for the Challenge.

What inspired our team to choose this challenge was that the subject of this chllange was more involved in our interests than others and We wanted to help if we could do it in the development of reconnaissance missions to mars.

While developing this project, we first split the problem into parts:

What is the purpose of the challenge?
What does the Challenge want us to do?
What points should we pay attention to while designing the crop production system?
How can we benefit from previous research while developing the crop production system?

After breaking the problem into parts, we divided the work. At the end of the division of labor, we all reviewed what we had prepared and corrected the parts that needed to be corrected. Finally, we uploaded our project.

As we wrote above, we fell into despair many times. But each time we managed to rekindle our hope and continued on our way. When we were in despair, we supported each other as a team, we tried to raise our morale. We were all behind each other.

Yes, there are people we want to thank. The first person we would like to thank is our local leader, Selman Ali. We would like to thank him for guiding us through the meetings he held throughout the process, not leaving our questions unanswered, and sharing what he learned from his own experiences with us. Another person we would like to thank is our English teacher, Ulaş Aytuğ Bayram, for supporting and being with us throughout the process.