Gardeners of the Galaxy Mission Report: 11 June 2024
Your weekly round-up of astrobotany news and adventure. This week we've got greenhouses built from lunar regolith, an autonomous plant pod for the Moon and news on an all-British space mission.
Hello, Gardeners of the Galaxy! Welcome to this week's Mission Report.
I’m a bit bogged down at the moment, but as soon as things ease up, I’ll be working on the next Gardeners of the Galaxy episode, for which the wonderful Borja Barbero Barcenilla is our Mission Specialist. He’s talking about his exciting work on plant telomeres in space, and you won’t want to miss it!
But who should be the next Mission Specialist? Who would you like to hear from? Or could it be YOU? Do you have a good story to tell?
Let me know who you think would make a great guest. Reply to this email, leave a comment, say howdy on LinkedIn or drop me a line to earth@spacebotany.uk. I look forward to hearing your suggestions!
Building Greenhouses on the Moon
Over the last couple of years, NTNU Social Research has been helping the European Space Agency answer an important question: is it possible to build greenhouses on the moon without transporting any materials from Earth?
Project Manager Sophie Labonnote-Weber and Senior Researcher Øyvind Mejdell Jakobsen, both from NTNU Social Research, worked with SINTEF, an organisation that knows a lot about construction and material properties.
Brick by Brick
Researchers from SINTEF had previously developed a substitute material very similar to regolith. When they tried using 3D-printed concrete made from this substitute material, however, they found it was not the best solution for use on the Moon. They determined that it is not possible to use a water-based system in the vacuum that exists on the Moon, unless you are inside a pressurised room.
A more promising concept uses the same principle as LECA (Lightweight Expanded Clay Aggregate) balls, those little balls of clay used houseplants and hydroponics. A reaction between carbon and the iron oxide in the regolith forms a CO2/CO gas that expands the regolith it’s when heated close to its melting point.
For these experiments, the carbon source they chose was sugar. Adding a small amount of sugar to lunar regolith, and then heating the mix to around 1200°C, causes it to expand and produce a light, thermally insulating material. The SINTEF researchers have named it LER (lightweight expanded regolith).
The idea would be to extract and process regolith to form bricks, which could be used to form a domed structure, similar to bricklaying here on Earth.
The greenhouses must be built close to a source of useable water, which means at the lunar poles. Once they’ve constructed the greenhouse, the astronauts will need waterproof planters.
“There is not a lot of sulphur on the moon, but if the astronauts are able to extract it, there will be enough to make waterproof cultivation boxes. Sulphur has a low melting point (120°C) and can be applied to the LER product in liquid form before it solidifies. It then forms a waterproof coating,” explain Harald Justnes and Tobias Danner from SINTEF Community.
Drip by Drip
The Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Space (CIRiS) is an active partner in several research and development projects aiming towards future bioregenerative life support systems. Its researchers are looking into how to grow plants in lunar greenhouses.
Armed with LER material samples, Labonnote-Weber and Mejdell Jakobsen were able to experiment with hydroponic cultivation in specially designed boxes.
“We cultivated a type of lettuce that was exposed to the lightweight expanded regolith to see if it would affect the lettuce’s growth,” says Labonnote-Weber.
The project has also assessed functionality, durability and how easily the small material samples can be transferred to a full-scale model on the Moon, plus what it would be like to only eat self-grown plants over lengthy periods of time. Their final report to ESA suggests that everything looks promising and possible to implement on the Moon.
It could be that their project finds a home on Earth first.
“The global population is increasing all the time, and we need to eat more plant-based food. We have to produce it ourselves. Knowing the most efficient ways to grow plants will be useful knowledge in the future. What we have done here is easily transferable to the conditions on Earth,” says Labonnote-Weber.
Source: Building greenhouses on the moon out of moon dust
Mission Little Prince
Interstellar Lab has released some more short videos about Mission Little Prince, its plan to deliver a blooming rose to the Moon.
Space Program Lead, Jacob Scoccimerra, told Payload that the biggest technical challenges the team face include:
Protecting the rose from radiation on the lunar surface inside a transparent case that will allow for a photo of the plant
Controlling the temperature once the container is standing alone on the surface, which can experience extreme hot and cold temperatures
Ensuring the rose gets the water and nutrients it needs in a low pressure, low gravity environment that makes traditional irrigation systems difficult to use.
Here’s a closer look at Bloom - Interstellar Lab’s latest BioPod - an autonomous and controlled-environment module designed to grow plants in a closed-loop system for biosciences research on the lunar surface.
Bloom is developed to be shipped and deployed with Astrolab’s rover FLEX as part of Artemis Campaign on the South Pole to understand lunar environmental impact on plants. A first step to the deployment of a BioFarming platform on the Moon, a sustainable and reliable solution to establish a permanent human base and facilitate future missions to Mars.
According to Payload, Interstellar Lab is planning to fly Bloom to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2025, to conduct plant growth experiments in microgravity.
Artemis astronauts recently took part in an event to plant a Moon Tree in the grounds of the US Capitol.
"That little sweetgum has been to the Moon and it has come back and it is now sitting here. I think about this tree growing maybe about 'that tall' as we are finished with Artemis II and we're back,” said Reid Wiseman, who was joined at the tree planting ceremony by his three fellow Artemis astronauts: Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen.
Read more: 'Most unique tree here': Artemis Moon Tree planted at US Capitol
Andrew Chen, a sophomore at East Rockaway Jr./Sr. High School, has determined how to help astronauts stay in space longer earning him second place at NASA’s Growing Beyond Earth science research competition. Chen submitted a research proposal to the competition where he talked about the effects of elevated CO2 concentrations on the germination rate of Eruca sativa, also called astro arugula.
Read more: Andrew Chen’s science project: out of this world
Grist has a feature on the work Rebeca Gonçalves did with GotG Friend Wieger Wamelink at Wageningen University, exploring how intercropping would work on Mars and the benefits it could bring to Earth.
“Understanding how to grow crops in the extraordinarily harsh conditions on other planets does more than ensure those colonizing them can feed themselves. It helps those here at home continue to do the same as the world warms.”
Read more: Why a new method of growing food on Mars matters more on Earth
Two stories from spaceflight pioneers this week. Sadly we’ve lost Bill Anders, the Apollo 8 astronaut who took the iconic ‘Earthrise’ photo. On a happier note, Ed Dwight finally made it to space after waiting more than fifty years.
The Guardian has an interview with Tim Peake, in which he talks about the proposed all-British space mission. It says that mission is due to launch next year and Peake is expected to be announced as the flight’s commander within the coming weeks. Peake also says he expects parastronaut John McFall to be onboard, for a mission lasting two or three weeks.
Read more: ‘The only limit is our imagination’: Tim Peake on what living in space taught him about life on Earth
Research in Indigenous astronomy is not only changing narratives around Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledge and traditions, it’s changing the history of science.
Read more: “The Boorong pride themselves upon knowing more of astronomy than any other”
I love the DLR’s school project – the SPACEBUZZ ONE. It’s a specially converted high-tech truck trailer that looks like a lying rocket on the outside and houses the latest VR technology in a space design inside. It’s home to a comprehensive school and educational program to complement STEM lessons.
Before the truck comes to a school, the students first go through “astronaut training”, learning about space, space travel and its importance for society. Once the pre-flight training has been successfully completed, SPACEBUZZ ONE docks with the school to give young astronauts an unforgettable flight into space. Sitting on movable seats, they don VR glasses and experience a virtual space flight into space, leaving Earth to orbit for 12 minutes. They learn a lot about our home planet and climate change from an astronauts' perspective, before continuing to the Moon and finally landing back on Earth.
SPACEBUZZ ONE will be traveling in the Cologne/Bonn area in September 2024. Teachers there can check the SPACEBUZZONE website to see whether they meet all the requirements for a visit and register directly.
And this is mind boggling. A Japanese company is planning on building a space elevator for space launches by 2050. Is successful, the sci-fi concept could mean a trip to Mars takes just 40 days.
Read more: Japanese Company Plans to Build a Tower Into Space by 2050
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Plants don’t have brains or nervous systems, but scientists are now discovering that plants do respond to their environments in much quicker ways than they once thought possible. Simon Gilroy, a University of Wisconsin-Madison botany professor, is among a handful of scientists uncovering how plants respond to the world.
Read more: Wisconsin scientist: Plants respond to biting insects faster than you might think
Dutch brand G-Star Raw partnered with a Dutch university on a small pilot project to grow cotton in a greenhouse, then use it to create denim. The end result was five pairs of jeans, made from end-to-end entirely in the Netherlands. Now, G-Star Raw is exploring how to scale this production so that denim brands around the world can create locally made jeans that have a far smaller environmental footprint.
Read more: Someday your jeans could be grown in a greenhouse down the street and Homegrown Denim.
In her new book, “The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth”, Zoë Schlanger in her new book explores the history of research into how plants respond to their environment and the pressing questions new research poses about the shared future of plants and humans.
Read more: Book Review: How Plants Experience the World
Gardens could be part of the solution to the climate and biodiversity crisis. But what are we doing? Disappearing them beneath plastic and paving.
Read more: Where the wild things are: the untapped potential of our gardens, parks and balconies
Robin Wall Kimmerer, the botanist and author of Braiding Sweetgrass, spoke with the Guardian regarding what we can learn from the most ancient plants on Earth, why we need to cultivate gratitude for the natural world and what western science can learn from Indigenous knowledge.
Listen here: Botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer: ‘The clock is ticking but the world will teach us what we need to do’ – podcast
Flowering is a crucial biological process in angiosperms, impacting ecological balance and horticultural value. Despite extensive studies, the regulatory mechanisms of flowering genes remain incompletely understood due to the vast diversity among plant species. An in-depth study compiling and analysing flowering genes across a broad spectrum of plant species addresses these gaps, providing a unified platform for exploring flowering gene regulation and interactions.
Read more: New plant flowering gene atlas paves the way for advanced horticultural studies
Students from all over the world are applying to study a new master’s degree in "smart agriculture" at Nottingham Trent University. The course includes the skills you need to manage a vertical farm, exploring how artificial intelligence (AI), vertical farming, automation, and precision agriculture could protect food supplies and reduce energy and fertiliser costs.
Working in glasshouses and solar-powered shipping containers, researchers on the Brackenhurst campus develop 'recipes' to produce food crops far faster than would be possible outdoors.
Read more: Masters degree to teach 'smart' future of farming
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Ex solo ad astra,
Emma (Space Gardener)