College students working with NASA are helping devise solutions that may make living on other worlds possible.
Short for eXploration Systems and Habitation Academic Innovation Challenge, the X-Hab Challenge represents one of several platforms NASA leverages to crowdsource solutions to complex challenges in order to keep humans healthy and productive in deep space.
Universities submit their ideas and NASA's technical experts review and select the proposals. NASA surveys the agency for issues that need solutions to enable exploration.
“There are key issues needing solutions for food production in microgravity during exploration missions. These issues are water and nutrient delivery to the root zone and the recycling of nutrients from inedible plant materials and waste," said Charlie Quincy, Kennedy Space Center’s Life Science maturation manager. "This year, two projects tackled both watering plants in space and nutrient and material recovery."
Ohio State University in Wooster, Ohio, recently finished its project, entitled “Passive Watering and Plant Biomass Recycling Systems for eXploration Habitat.”
This project was two projects in one – while one team focused on designing a reliable, low-energy, low-maintenance water delivery system using wicking and capillary forces, a second team examined how to incorporate recycled inedible plant matter, including root and stems, into a rooting structure for the next plant growing cycle.
The passive water delivery portion examined alternate water delivery methods for the Veggie experiment on the International Space Station.
The addition this year was to use a collapsible reservoir and a device to aid fluid flow in microgravity.
The recycling team designed a bioreactor and a process of shredding and dehydrating plant matter to transform plant waste into plant-growth substrate that could be used to grow plants for food.
The University of Michigan in Ann Arbor tackled turning urine into plant nutrition. Its project, entitled “Space Life and Physical Sciences: Wastewater to Plant Nutrient Solution,” extracts water and plant nutrients along with edible sodium from the wastewater and urine generated by a human space habitat.
The student team members presented the design process, construction and testing of the subcomponents of their hardware and software, and demonstrated how the hardware works.
The system involves a multistage setup of pretreatment ultrafiltration to separate materials, electrodialysis to remove inorganic salts, and finally ultraviolet light to remove bacteria and viruses. The resulting water and nutrients could then be recycled to grow plants for food.
The students were able to demonstrate that water and plant nutrient output from their system could be used to grow plants that are safe for human consumption.
X-Hab is sponsored by Advanced Exploration Systems, or AES, a division in NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate.
AES develops strategic partnerships and collaborations with universities to help bridge gaps and increase knowledge in architectural design trades, capabilities and technology risk reduction related to AES activities.
NASA Space Life and Physical Science Research and Applications Division provided food production research topics and funding for materials, parts and services for selected projects to address real spaceflight issues and inspire the future NASA workforce.
Amanda Griffin works for NASA's John F. Kennedy Space Center.
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