Gardeners of the Galaxy Mission Report: 17 September 2024
Your weekly round-up of astrobotany news and adventure. This week we've got hydroponic mushrooms and Moon plants, a robotic arm for EDEN LUNA & a great video imagining the first farmer for Mars.
Hello, Gardeners of the Galaxy! Welcome to this week's Mission Report.
I was away from my desk last week (flying over the Eden Project on a zip wire, thanks for asking!), so of course lots of interesting things happen. This is a bumper edition of the Mission Report and I’m still not going to fit everything in!
GotG Friend Marshall D Porterfield (episode 57) is working with Eden Grow Systems to commercialize revolutionary mushroom-growing technology, providing the mushroom industry with the benefits of controlled environment agriculture that have already revolutionized traditional agriculture.
A new subsidiary, Myco Inc., uses breakthrough technology to create a controlled environment for growing mushrooms, allowing precision nutrient delivery and customizable substrates. This new technology increases yields, decreases maturation time, and significantly decreases production costs. Unlike standard processes that suffer from uneven nutrient distribution, disposable and wasteful substrates, and a lack of predictability in yields, MycoponicsTM offers an environmentally friendly, consistent, low-cost, and repeatable method of growing mushrooms for consumption and production inputs.
“This represents a quantum leap in mushroom productization and science,” said Prof Porterfield, CTO of Myco and inventor of MycoponicsTM in his role as a professor at Purdue. “For the first time ever, mushrooms can be cultivated with precision, customized for different industries, and harvested for medicinal purposes with efficiency and efficacy.”
Edible mushrooms are an important source of nutrients and are used in products such as cosmetics and supplements. Mushrooms are increasingly being investigated as a source for vegan leather products and biodegradable consumer packaging. MycoponicsTM uniquely allows mushrooms to be grown to any 3D shape, making everything from custom vegan leather gloves to biodegradable to-go containers possible, for pennies on the dollar compared to current solutions. Mushrooms also have natural radiation resistance, and this new technology may enable new methods of radiation shielding on spacecraft or custom-grown spacesuits for astronauts.
Read more: 'Hydroponics for Mushrooms' Technology Will Revolutionize the $50B/yr Mushroom Market
Prof Porterfield also recently began work for NASA’s Artemis missions, which aim to send astronauts back to the Moon. He's part of the team building a new plant growth experiment for the Artemis III mission, currently set for launch in 2026. In collaboration with Christine Escobar of Space Lab Technologies, LLC, the principal investigator for NASA’s Lunar Effects on Agricultural Flora (LEAF) instrument, Porterfield and his lab are preparing to send plants to the Moon.
If cleared to fly, LEAF will include three different plant species aboard SpaceX’s Starship lander, tucked away as seeds in a growth chamber. Once the Artemis III crew lands on the Moon, they’ll place the automated chamber on the lunar surface and activate water flow to start the plants’ growth.
As the mission ends, the crew will “fix” some of the plant samples for genetic analysis, preserving them chemically before taking them back to Earth. Some plants, however, will remain in the growth chamber on the Moon, where the LEAF team will watch them through a camera inside the experiment to continue monitoring their growth for as long as possible.
“The growth chamber will protect the plants from sunlight. They’ll be grown under LED lights. But we’re intentionally letting them be exposed to deep space radiation,” Porterfield says.
Seeing how plants react and grow under these extremes could provide answers on how to best protect future plants grown on the Moon. What’s more, they could offer solutions to better protect astronauts on these longer missions. As Porterfield points out, “What we can learn regarding cellular-level damage in a plant will be directly applicable to humans.”
The LEAF growth chamber is also equipped with an air circulation system, much like the air conditioning for a building. Fans will provide mechanical convection to overcome microgravity-induced stagnant boundary layers, which should allow the plants to exchange gas and water with the air like they do on Earth. The LEAF scientists also have the option to turn that off and see how plants respond to the lack of airflow in microgravity. Porterfield looks forward to observing changes in their growth, photosynthetic rates and atmospheric content.
Read more: Purdue and NASA scientists plant the seeds for lunar agriculture
In other news...
NASA has confirmed that Crew 9 (currently scheduled to launch on 24 September) will be working on a plant experiment on the International Space Station (ISS). Plant Habitat-07 will grow ‘Outredgeous’ red romaine lettuce in the Advanced Plant Habitat to examine how moisture conditions affect the nutritional quality and microbial safety of plants. The APH controls humidity, temperature, air, light, and soil moisture, creating the precise conditions needed for the experiment.
Using a plant known to grow well in space removes a challenging variable from the equation, explained Chad Vanden Bosch at Redwire (and a payload engineer on the PH-07 project), and this lettuce also has been proven to be safe to consume when grown in space.
“For crews building a base on the Moon or Mars, tending to plants may be low on their list of responsibilities, so plant growth systems need to be automated,” Bosch said. “Such systems may not always provide the perfect growing conditions, though, so we need to know if plants grown in suboptimal conditions are safe to consume.”
Meanwhile, on the ISS, it looks as though APEX-09 is finished, as Jeanette Epps and Mike Barratt have harvested the plants growing in Veggie and popped the samples in the freezer to wait for a ride home. And NASA astronaut Don Pettit has arrived to join Expedition 71, so let’s hope he gets up to his usual tricks and sows some seeds!
A team of researchers from the DLR released a paper about EVE, a robotic arm intended to help automate the operations of the first lunar greenhouse, at the IEEE Aerospace conference in March. The EDEN Versatile End-effector (or EVE) is designed to interface with the EDEN LUNA greenhouse, and consists of three main components. The transport rails allow the robot to move to the correct location in the greenhouse. Its robotic “arm” enables the robot to position itself effectively to complete its assigned task, and the end effector can push, pull, pick up, or perform other manual tasks. The system uses about 700W and weighs about 170 kg fully installed.
Read more: Can a Greenhouse with a Robotic Arm Feed the Next Lunar Astronauts?
A team of University of Nebraska researchers have one major goal: to launch the first centre for agriculture in space. Whether it’s Mars or the moon, if people will be there, they’ll have to eat, and so researchers are exploring how to take agriculture out of this world.
Read more: An Idea Out of This World: University of Nebraska Researchers Work to Launch Agriculture in Space
In a greenhouse at the Hualian Agricultural Technology Demonstration Center in Shanxi province, vegetable seeds that journeyed into space have taken root and started bearing fruit.
See more: Vegetable seeds taken into space are sprouting on Earth
Magnitude.io's ExoLab-11 is scheduled to launch to the ISS in October aboard SpaceX-31. The 4-week mission will investigate optimal growing conditions on a model plant, Medicago truncatula in microgravity and in classrooms, science centres, libraries, and museums around the world. If you're interested in joining in, they're holding Mission Readiness webinars this month.
Learn more: ExoLab
The latest SALAD newsletter focuses on brassicas in space. You can learn more about various space crops, and growth chamber hardware, on the SALAD wiki. Visit the main SALAD website to sign up for the newsletter.
And Polaris Dawn has done its thing, and the crew are safely back on Earth. Hopefully this means we will hear more about LEO PLANTS soon!
Read more: SpaceX crew returns to Earth after historic mission
Dr Joan Lynam’s Biomass Lab in Louisiana Tech University’s College of Engineering and Science has developed a method to recycle urine into water and use the waste byproducts as plant fertilizer. Their goal is to create an easy, sustainable source of water and growth on the moon’s surface with implementation potential in the areas of lunar and deep-space farming.
Read more: NASA-funded research at Louisiana Tech aims to revolutionize farming on the moon (there’s also a tv news item on this included in the Watch It! section.)
Astronaut Strawberries sold by American Outdoor Products are being recalled for elevated lead levels
Find out more: Astronaut Strawberries Recalled for Elevate Lead Levels
During an August 20 flyby, the European Space Agency's Juice probe turned its MAJIS imaging spectrometer and SWI submillimetre spectrometer to Earth's atmosphere, looking for molecules and elements that, together, indicate that life could not only emerge and survive on a world, but may even be there right now. Everything appeared to be all present and correct, which is good news for us on a few levels, when you think about it.
Read more: A Distant Spacecraft Has Confirmed That Earth Is Habitable
There's a lovely article in the Guardian celebrating 16 years of Incredible Edible, the food-focused guerrilla gardening movement that encourages people to take food-growing – and more – into their own hands. Founder Pam Warhurst's idea has taken root, with at least 150 Incredible Edible groups across the UK, from Orkney to Cornwall, and sister movements in France, Spain, Australia, New Zealand and even Argentina. Her message is simple. Failures of leadership around the unfolding disasters of climate breakdown, plummeting biodiversity and social disintegration have left people with only one choice: to take matters into their own hands.
Read more: 'The system is the problem, not people': how a radical food group spread round the world.
Plants can grow with much less light than previously thought, according to a new study on tiny water-based microalgae that has been published in Nature Communications. The German-led team of researchers lowered light sensors into Arctic water to a depth of 50 metres to test how low light levels must become before plant life ceases to exist, with incredible results.
Read more: Plants can grow in near-darkness, new research shows – here are three promising benefits
This year’s Ig Nobel Prize for Botany has gone to Jacob White and Felipe Yamashita, for finding evidence that some real plants imitate the shapes of neighbouring artificial plastic plants. Boquila trifoliolata can change the shape of its leaves to fit into its surroundings. To test the hypothesis that the plant picks up on a chemical signal, they gave it a plastic plant to mimic. And it did. Bonkers.
Read more: Ig® Nobel Prize Winners
In Nepal, fiddlehead ferns (Matteuccia struthiopteris, known locally as niuro), are highly prized, particularly in the monsoon season. Harvesting niruo - a means of subsistence for landless people living close to national parks – brings people into conflict with patrolling soldiers and wild animals like tigers and rhinos.
Read more: In Nepal, a humble edible fern is at heart of human-tiger conflict
The sub-zero repository at the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection’s Reforestation Center stores over 42,000 pounds of pristine seed collected from the state’s native conifers, from coastal redwoods to alpine firs. An adjacent facility holds young oaks and other hardwood species. The center’s goal is to help private landowners restore their charred landscapes — rebuilding forests too badly burned to regrow naturally.
Read more: To build back burned forests, California needs a lot more seeds (lots of nice seedy pics in this one!)
The destruction of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure is endangering the rare and exotic species at Kyiv botanical gardens.
Read more: Kyiv’s botanical garden staring at disaster as Russia targets Ukraine’s energy sector
Work it!
Utah State University is recruiting an assistant professor for Controlled-Environment Agriculture. The division of roles in this position will be 65% Research, 30% Teaching, 5% Service. Evaluation of the applicants will begin on 15 November, but applications will be accepted until the position is filled.
Find out more: Assistant Professor – Controlled-Environment Agriculture
Watch it!
First Farmer on Mars! Purdue University's short film explores what it will take to go to Mars — to take the small steps that lead to the next giant leap. The one that guides humankind beyond where it’s been and into the future of the next frontier.
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Ex solo ad astra,
Emma (Space Gardener)