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Scientists have harvested the first vegetables grown in the EDEN-ISS greenhouse at Germany's Neumeyer-Station III in Antarctica. 3.6 kg of salad greens, 18 cucumbers, and 70 radishes were grown inside the greenhouse, which uses a closed water cycle with no soil.
An air management system controls the temperature and humidity, removes contaminants (such as ethylene, microbes, and viruses) and regulates the amount of oxygen and carbon dioxide to optimize growth. Water-cooled LEDs deliver lighting with a spectrum that is 15% blue (400-500 nm), 10% green (500-600 nm), ~75% red (600-700 nm), and ~2% far-red (700-750 nm). A nutrient delivery system stores stock solutions, acids/bases, deionized water, and nutrient solution, and pumps them into the cultivation system as needed.
The final crop yield for the shipping container sized facility is estimated to be 4.25 kg per week (250g each of lettuce, chard, rugula, and spinach, 1 kg of tomatoes, 600g of sweet peppers, 1 kg of cucumbers, 250g of radishes, 100g of strawberries, and 300g of herbs). The purpose of the project is to test food production technologies that could be used on the International Space System, Moon, Mars missions, etc. It will also provide fresh food supplementation year-round for the crew of Neumeyer-Station III (estimated population of 9 in the winter, 50 in the summer).
EDEN-ISS has some advantages (open, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.60431) (DX) over the ISS's current Veggie system, including a higher available growth surface, longer possible production cycle using complete nutrient solution circulation, better reliability and safety, and the ability to grow taller crops (up to 60 cm). The system is designed to be flown to the ISS as a payload of EDR II experimental inserts.
Related: Tomorrow, NASA Astronauts Will Finally Eat Fresh, Microgravity-Grown Veggies
SpaceX Launches CRS-14 Resupply Mission to the ISS (carried the competing Passive Orbital Nutrient Delivery System)
(Score: 3, Funny) by Bot on Friday April 06 2018, @04:26AM (7 children)
> The system is designed to be flown to the ISS as a payload of EDR II experimental inserts.
You might want to spoiler this sexy stuff next time. My CPU temp went up 10% all of a sudden.
As a good side effect of TFA, some uncivilized people will know about rugula.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday April 06 2018, @04:52AM
While I can sorta see why a bot would get excited of "experimental inserts" in general, I can't fathom how the excitement can persist enough to raise the core temperature when learning the inserted load is a bunch of roquette.
Or... was the cucumber that got you excited? Still doesn't make sense for a bot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 06 2018, @05:09AM (3 children)
arugula? The most horrible, bitter green in existence? It should be forgotton by all civilized people.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday April 06 2018, @05:16AM (2 children)
"Bitter green" may explain your aversion: while it's green indeed, at the grow stage roquette is meant to be eaten it's barely bitter - yes, it's still pungent/peppery (slightly mouth numbing), but I'd not characterize the taste as bitter.
Try too harvest it while younger, at some 5-6 cm (2-2.5 inches) tall.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 06 2018, @09:47AM (1 child)
IIRC, the sense of "bitterness" changes dramatically as you age. Old people, in general, don't sense bitterness as strongly as younger people. Pickles, for example, are almost inedible for most young people, especially children, while parents and grandparents like it very much.
This is a source of much parent/child conflict, as parents simply fail to consider that their child's sense of taste may be simply different from their own, and assume that the child is exaggerating the dislike or even disgust they feel. World would be so much better if adults retained more of their childhood memories...
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday April 06 2018, @10:20AM
My experience says otherwise in regards with sour things: I can't stand taste those extremely sour gums that the kids seems to enjoy that much. I also remember as a kid I enjoyed green (i.e. unripened) apples and plums and today I can't stand even ripened Granny Smith.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday April 06 2018, @07:34AM
They called it "rocket" in the video I lifted the numbers from.
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(Score: 4, Funny) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Friday April 06 2018, @08:39AM
Some kind of vampire carpet?
(Score: 1) by RandomFactor on Friday April 06 2018, @04:53AM (2 children)
Curious we need to cool LEDs in Antarctica.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 06 2018, @05:06AM
Presumably the greenhouse, where the LEDs would be, is heated. At least I don't know of any salads an cucumbers that grow in sub-negative-fifty-Celsius :)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Friday April 06 2018, @07:36AM
You need to have your cooling systems well planned out in space.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 06 2018, @05:04AM
Really, I mean, how many heads of lettuce does it take to change a light bulb? No, wait, I mean, *Speed kills!*
Forget to wind the watch, and everybody dies! Insane!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by jmorris on Friday April 06 2018, @05:59AM (24 children)
By "shipping container" I assume they mean a standard one? The picture is about right. For less than ten pounds of veggies per week. Would need to know how much in supplies per week it needs but unless you are prepping for a really long duration mission, stuff the same volume with dehydrated food and win. If the thing is almost entirely self sufficient (and it doesn't sound like it) you could justify it on the ISS if it had went up near the beginning of the mission. Near the end though? (The wisdom of ending the ISS instead of adding / replacing modules is another story for another day.)
In the Antarctic it might make sense because those bases aren't likely to be abandoned so if the thing can be perfected to run decades it would eventually pay off. Same for a moonbase. And if a fatal equipment failure stops food production you can hope to ship in parts or food before everyone dies. A Mars mission is probably better off just carrying dehydrated rations and not worrying about a failure of food production dooming the mission.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday April 06 2018, @06:11AM (17 children)
I rather think is the cost/risks of resupply that drives towards one choice or another, with the mission duration doesn't have too much impact on it.
E.g. you can supply ISS for tens of years with dehydrated stuff at lower cost than growing it on the station, it may or may not be the same with a Mars colony, almost for sure won't be the case for an asteroid mining station 0 distance/delta-v plays a higher role than the mission duration.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday April 06 2018, @07:53AM (16 children)
Fresh food increases morale, and likely nutrition, and is intended to be used as "supplementation" rather than the sole source of food.
These crop systems may fare better on the Moon or Mars if they can use the dirt or water there.
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Friday April 06 2018, @08:45AM (14 children)
Even letting aside the atmosphere and water presence, they may or may not fare better, we'll never know until it is actually tried there.
Some minerals will need to be added (e.g. potassium and sodium are mostly missing on Moon [wikipedia.org]), carbon is present in the soil at trace level [lunarpedia.org] (80 to 200 ppm - so come with your own CO2, you won't be able to burn indigenous dinosaur juice there), some of other substances/complexes will need to be "tamed down" (e.g., due to UV and radiation exposure, the Mars' soil is full of oxidants - mainly perchlorates [space.com]).
Ah, yes, speaking of radiation... should I continue?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday April 06 2018, @09:01AM (7 children)
Food is grown inside an enclosed environment on the ISS, just like it would be on the Moon. On the ISS, you have to bring over all your water and nutrients to grow anything, not just potassium and sodium. The Moon has greater exposure to radiation than the ISS, but that is a problem that will have to be solved anyway if you want astronauts to live there. That could mean going a few feet underground and using compressed regolith as natural shielding.
Perchlorate [wikipedia.org] may be a resource (rather than purely a nuisance/contaminant) with some Mars-relevant applications:
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(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Friday April 06 2018, @12:43PM (6 children)
Look, I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm saying it's not straight-forward to use-the-regolith-as such-just-add-water.
In regards with perchlorates - yes, they are a source of oxygen when heated.
It would be very nice to have ammonium perchlorate on Mars, that would be a cheap source of ammonia. Unfortunately, ammonia and ammonium ion aren't very stable when bombarded with radiation - the nitrogen in the N2 molecule is so much stable (at lower energy) than in ammonia that the most economic way of producing ammonia consumes up to 5% of the world's annual natural gas production to make hydrogen and generate heat to run the reaction, and it consumes about 2% of the world's annual energy production. [stanford.edu]. So no, not ammonium perchlorate on Mars.
The perchlorate there is calcium perchlorate (almost 1% of the Martian dust, by weight) [wikipedia.org] - need to heat it over 400C [usra.edu] (PDF warning) to free the oxygen in the absence of catalysts, but will decompose quite easily (one would say too easily - may be explosively so) in the presence of iron oxides - Mars is not lacking of those.
And that sounds as bad luck [nature.com] for bacteria survival on Mars
So, add water and, without UV, calcium perchlorate will decompose and release oxygen to kill the bacteria or plants. With UV (to move the balance of the equation to favour chlorate production), it's deadly.
The solution: bring regolith inside, slowly add water and let the perchlorate decompose. Then add more water to wash out the remaining calcium chloride, because too much chlorine ions will kill your plants otherwise (Treated pool water damages the plants [sfgate.com] and guess what remains in the water after all the calcium hypochlorite does its job?)
One will have to hope they'll find enough water around on Mars.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday April 06 2018, @01:02PM (5 children)
There seems to be an abundance of water on the Moon and Mars, and it could be decently accessible on Mars:
NAU planetary scientist’s study suggests widespread presence of water on the Moon [nau.edu]
Steep Slopes on Mars Reveal Structure of Buried Ice [soylentnews.org]
100 meter thick ice is under only 1-2 meters of dirt in some parts of Mars [nextbigfuture.com]
Hopefully, colonies would be very frugal and reuse as much waste as possible, keeping most of the obtained water cycling throughout the habitat.
Incidentally, there appears to be a lot of water at Mercury's poles [brown.edu]. Given Mercury's high gravity (0.38g, basically identical to Mars), and proximity to the Sun (about 6.5x greater power per solar panel than on Earth), it may be the better choice for a small colony.
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(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday April 06 2018, @01:50PM (4 children)
I wouldn’t like to be there during solar storms.
Bremsstrahlung radiation from those energetic charged particle and huge flux values must be horrendous.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Friday April 06 2018, @03:37PM (3 children)
Mercury is tidally locked. One side is insanely hot and bathed in solar radiation, the other side is permanently in shadow and cold.
Any colony would most likely be built on the terminator between these two extreme environments. That way you could benefit from both: Solar panels on the hot side, sending their output via cables running a few tens of kilometres to the habitats which would be entirely or mostly in the shade, shielded from the sun's glare and lit by artificial light.
Alternatively, you could build on the shady side, near the terminator, and then build mirrors on very tall towers that peek over the horizon to reflect life-giving sunlight (but not the deadly radiation) down onto your colony. The mirrors could even be angled to "on" and "off" positions regularly to simulate a human & plant-friendly day / night cycle.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Friday April 06 2018, @03:45PM
Scrap that last comment: I was wrong, Mercury isn't tidally locked at all. It rotates, albeit very very slowly.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday April 06 2018, @03:50PM
https://www.universetoday.com/130109/how-do-we-colonize-mercury/ [universetoday.com]
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:North_pole_of_Mercury_--_NASA.jpg [wikimedia.org]
You want to set up shop in the shaded polar region, which has evidence of water ice.
The Universe Today article suggests using satellites to gather solar energy and then beaming it down to the surface (or even to other parts of the solar system), but I assume you could just put panels on the surface and run transmission lines to the polar craters.
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(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday April 06 2018, @04:03PM
Mercury has a 3:2 spin–orbit resonance. 3 days every 2 tears in Mercury terms.
A colony on the terminator will need to move some tens or hundred of metres/hour - too lazy to do the actual calculation, but I believe a speed achievable by a human walking (EVAs would be possible).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ElizabethGreene on Friday April 06 2018, @06:25PM (5 children)
According to research at Wageningen University in .nl, it isn't dramatically more complex than adding water.
In experiments using Martian and Lunar soil simulant with chemistry based on probe data, plants will germinate in regolith and water, but are stunted because of macro-nutrient shortages. Adding fertilizer and/or carbon and/or post-mammalian-biomass helps the growth rate significantly. One of their big concerns was leaching of heavy metals, but tests of the crops indicate metal levels are within the acceptable range.
This is cool research. If you want to play with it too, you can get Lunar and Martian* regolith simulant for a reasonable fee online.
* available both with and without perchlorate salts.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday April 06 2018, @06:43PM (4 children)
See, that's the thing, it's a soil simulant
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Sunday April 08 2018, @04:59PM (3 children)
I'm in complete agreement there. If we get to Mars and there is something chemically in the regolith that prevents plant growth we'll have to do something clever (or die.)
I'm less concerned about this than the problem that Mars' water reserves are unproven and unknown. Given sufficient energy we can make the stuff required to grow plants from toxic regolith, but without a source of hydrogen (preferably water) colonization just can't happen.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday April 09 2018, @12:43AM (2 children)
Personally, I see the energy problem above anything else.
Worse can me to worst, Mars is cold enough to have most of the salts in a hydrated form. For CO2, I suspect there will be enough carbonates to decompose and, as rarefied as it is, Mars atmosphere is mostly CO2 (with nitrogen coming second).
I think some form of small size sealed fission reactors landed on Mars before the first colonists arrive may do the trick. Not gonna happen without a serious lift capability, as small as those compact reactors may be, I expect will be in the 10-100 tons [456fis.org] range.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Thursday April 12 2018, @03:53PM (1 child)
Agreed. After you solve the problem of getting there alive Energy is a huge problem. The solar answer is a bit scary because of dust storms.
I've been thinking about this for a while and may have a way to add some redundancy here with a relatively small investment in launch mass. We're already planning to send ISRU methane and LOX generation and storage facilities. If we also ship a fuel cell that can consume those then that gives us backup generation capabilities. If the storage system has enough capacity then pure solar may be an option.
It would be a fairly significant constraint for high energy input systems like foundries though.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday April 12 2018, @09:53PM
Solar constants drops with the square of distance to the Sun. On Mars orbit, one has 586W/sqm.
Storage systems are reliant on electrochemistry - those batteries have a bad habit of refusing to work at low temperatures - one will need to place them underground, which means a need of enough energy available to dig the hole in the first place.
This sounds a bit strange: are you involved in a project to send a colony to Mars soon or are you using a generic "we" in the above?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 06 2018, @03:36PM
That's more or less how I treat surface crops in Dwarf Fortress.
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Friday April 06 2018, @07:51AM (3 children)
It's true that we're nearing the probable end of U.S. involvement with the ISS. Other partners could stay up there or use their existing modules a bit longer, and if need be, an EDEN-ISS system could be flown to something like LOP-G [wikipedia.org] instead (or perhaps ESA's "Moon village" [soylentnews.org]).
What I believe could be missing is a system to turn poop into an amount of the nutrient solution (using the remainder to pad the walls as radiation protection in the case of a Mars mission, although that might be unnecessary if the travel time is cut to 30 days like it should be).
Note: The last new module to be added to the ISS [wikipedia.org] was the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module in 2016, not that long ago. Russia is also planning to add a few new modules.
Any new space station (such as LOP-G) should be contracting with Bigelow to add B330s [wikipedia.org] or the massive BA 2100 [wikipedia.org].
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Friday April 06 2018, @08:44AM (2 children)
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=18/01/29/2236256 [soylentnews.org]
In particular.... (quoting myself)
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Friday April 06 2018, @06:30PM (1 child)
>For bonus points: Use it as a heatsink too
I'd be surprised if they needed to add heat. In composting it's not uncommon for the center of a pile to get hot enough that the heat is a limiting factor. It kills off the bacteria doing the work. This is a problem, so you put pipes into big piles so air can circulate and remove the heat.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Friday April 06 2018, @08:16PM
Right, but this isn't composting, this is sterilisation. Also, it's getting rid of unwanted heat form your spacecraft / habitat.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Friday April 06 2018, @08:55AM
Fully justified. It's not so much about reducing resupply requirements on the ISS as it is about proving that this technology works in space / refining it to get it to work in space. Testing, proving and developing space technologies is one of the things the ISS is ostensibly for.
Once you have proved / solved this technology, you have one half of a closed loop recycling system. I really shouldn't have to tell you how valuable that would be either in space or on Earth. See else-thread for discussions about the other half of the system.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday April 06 2018, @02:16PM
Only in the "man, it's so nice to have fresh vegetables" sense of things. Not only is it less than 10lbs per week, but it's mostly calorie-free food - they need some Matt Damon potatoes in the mix.
They do hydroponic farming in SouthEast Alaska because everything else is shipped in, and it's cost-competitive to grow some nice veggies locally as compared to air-shipping the same to get them fresh. It's not cost competitive from a survival standpoint, if you're just trying to survive then ship in the powdered stuff - much more efficient.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Friday April 06 2018, @06:34PM (2 children)
I'm happy to hear they are making progress, and giddy that this follows so soon after the first food grown and eaten in space (2015).
That said, I'm sad that we're inching up on 50 years since we walked on the moon and "Food grown in space" is a news story instead of an aisle in the grocery store.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday April 06 2018, @10:54PM (1 child)
BFR [wikipedia.org] will make all your wildest space dreams come true.
The hype is real.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Sunday April 08 2018, @05:04PM
Hl-20, x-33, x-38, Prometheus, Constellation ...
Until it flies it's vaporware. Even for Elon Musk. (And I'm a huge EM fangirl.)