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Challenges for a sustainable food production system on board of the international space station: A technical review
- Source :
- Agronomy, Vol 10, Iss 687, p 687 (2020)
- Publication Year :
- 2020
-
Abstract
- The possibility of prolonging space missions—and consequently the permanence of humans in space—depends on the possibility of providing them with an adequate supply of fresh foods to meet their nutritional requirements. This would allow space travelers to mitigate health risks associated with exposure to space radiation, microgravity and psychological stress. In this review, we attempt to critically summarize existing studies with the aim of suggesting possible solutions to overcome the challenges to develop a bio-regenerative life support system (BLSS) that can contribute to life support, supplying food and O2, while removing CO2 on the International Space Station (ISS). We describe the physical constraints and energy requirements for ISS farming in relation to space and energy resources, the problems related to lighting systems and criteria for selecting plants suitable for farming in space and microgravity. Clearly, the dimensions of a growth hardware that can be placed on ISS do not allow to produce enough fresh food to supplement the stored, packaged diet of astronauts; however, experimentation on ISS is pivotal for implementing plant growth systems and paves the way for the next long-duration space missions, including those in cis-lunar space and to the lunar surface.
- Subjects :
- Computer science
bio- regenerative life support systems (BLSS)
physical constrains
Space (commercial competition)
01 natural sciences
Space exploration
Candidate crop
lcsh:Agriculture
03 medical and health sciences
Solar energy
0103 physical sciences
International Space Station
Physical constrain
Photovoltaic cell module
010303 astronomy & astrophysics
Life support system
030304 developmental biology
0303 health sciences
business.industry
Space farming
lcsh:S
Light-emitting diodes (LED)
Nutrient delivery system
On board
VEGGIE
Risk analysis (engineering)
Agriculture
Life support
Bio-regenerative life support systems (BLSS)
Microgravity
business
Agronomy and Crop Science
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Agronomy, Vol 10, Iss 687, p 687 (2020)
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....4586e805ba0c90d14e77c24933a4c8ef