DailyDirt: Not Living Off The Land Anymore

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

It's not always easy to nurture plants so they grow and thrive, but it's especially difficult without land -- and gravity. Farming in space isn't exactly a common activity, but if any significant number of people are going to live in space for longer than a few months (without re-supply cargo ships or huge stores of packaged food), astronauts are going to need to figure out how to grow their meals. Space station residents have only just started to eat plants they've grown in space, so it'll be awhile before anyone is growing potatoes on Mars.

• Not too long ago, astronauts on the International Space Station ate vegetables grown in space for the first time. A greenhouse for growing plants has existed on the ISS since 2002, but no one on board ate the experiments before. It's far from a sustainable habitat up there, obviously, but we haven't exactly perfected sustainable farming techniques on the ground, either. [url]
• The very first space-grown vegetables were aboard the Mir space station in 1990, producing fresh radishes and Chinese cabbage. The first time plants were grown from seeds that were produced by parent plants that were also grown in space happened in 1997. A complete lifecycle (seed to seed) for growing plants in space isn't as easy as just adding water and setting up some lights. Microgravity and a variety of environmental conditions make it difficult for some plants to propagate. [url]
• The 'Seeds in Space' program allowed thousands of students to witness the differences of growing plants in space versus growing them on Earth. The kids observed how plants (rocket lettuce) grew in all directions both in micro-gravity and without a light source. [url]

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Filed Under: astronaut, farming, food, iss, mars, micro-gravity, mir, seeds in space, space, space exploration, space station
Companies: nasa

DailyDirt: Going To Mars

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Space travel is inherently risky, so it shouldn't be too surprising that spacecraft missions to Mars haven't all been successful. Sending people inside metal cans aimed at Mars isn't an easy task -- especially if those people want to return to Earth alive. But as more and more space programs target Mars as a destination, it looks increasingly likely that humans will make it there someday. Here are just a few milestones on the road to Mars.

• The Inspiration Mars Foundation is planning a roundtrip manned mission to Mars (non-stop, so no landing) that would last about 501 days, launching in 2018. A press conference to announce the details will be held on Feb 27th. [url]
• When the Phobos-Grunt mission failed to reach Mars orbit, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev suggested some severe punishments (but no death penalty!) for whoever was to blame. The mission had planned to return soil samples from Phobos (one of Mars' moons), but the spacecraft never left Earth orbit due to a computer programming error. [url]
• Valery V. Polyakov spent 438 continuous days in space aboard Mir and returned to Earth in 1995. That is the longest anyone has stayed in space in a single trip (others have been in space for more time, but over multiple trips), and it demonstrates that it's possible to survive in microgravity for the approximate amount of time it might take to go to Mars. [url]
• Elon Musk has a vision of a public-private joint venture to establish a human colony on Mars. Musk is obviously promoting the SpaceX brand with this kind of public statement, but he also says that a viable Mars mission would need about $36 billion to get off the ground. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Filed Under: astronauts, elon musk, mars, mir, phobos, space, space exploration, spacecraft, valery polyakov
Companies: inspiration mars foundation, spacex