A vegetable bed on the red planet

Space flights are long, and the grub served on them could easily become monotonous. A group of students designed a greenhouse for Mars so travellers could enjoy fresh food on arrival.

For the NASA International Space Apps Challenge, inventors around the world were invited to contribute new concepts that could be used in space. A Finnish team called Space Veggies took part in the Deployable Greenhouse challenge, in which the goal was to design a greenhouse for the Moon or Mars.

The 16-member team consisted mainly of students in fields ranging from physics to video editing. The University of Helsinki was represented by Nanna Lehto, a MSc student of plant breeding, and Tuure Parviainen, a MSc student of agroecology, both from the Department of Agricultural Sciences.

Specialists in agriculture were in high demand, since the project involved evaluating plants’ needs for water and nutrients, as well as their temperature requirements and ability to produce oxygen.

“Tuure collected lots of information about the basic needs of plants, and together we envisaged what species could be cultivated,” Nanna Lehto explains. “The plants used in the first phase should be ones that can be consumed in their entirety to waste as few nutrients as possible. Later on, dwarfed species, such as miniature apple trees, that nevertheless bear real-sized fruit, could be introduced.”

The greenhouse atmosphere would allow people to work in it without special accessories. It would be humid, though, because of the plants.

Everything to be brought along

According to agricultural scientists, the technology needed to cultivate food on Mars already exists. One of the challenges involved is radiation protection.

“Getting the required material to Mars is another challenge,” says Lehto. “At first, everything needs to be brought along: the growing media, nutrient solutions and seeds. In our vision, the seeds could be transported frozen. Later on, composted material could be mixed with the sand found on Mars.”

While NASA did not promise to implement the winning ideas, the Space Veggies team enthused over the mere opportunity to cooperate with the space association.

“We also wanted to throw in a couple of wild and imaginative ideas in our work, instead of just recycling results from, say, plant experiments carried out by NASA.”

Of the 750 teams participating in the challenge, 133 qualified for the final, among them another Finnish team called Meteorienteers. The jury had representatives from NASA and the ESA, and the public could vote for its favourites on Twitter. The winners were announced on 20 May 2013. The Best in Class nomination in the greenhouse challenge went to a Greek design for spinach cultivation.

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Space Veggies »»

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Text: Sanna Schildt
Photo: Veikko Somerpuro
3.6.2013
Translation: Language Services/Language Centre (University of Helsinki)
University of Helsinki, digital communications