Sunday Supplement: An AstroGardening Rover
An astrobiologist dreamed of building the world’s first space gardening rover.
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The history of spaceflight is littered with missions that never got off the ground. One I really wish had happened was the development of the world’s first AstroGardening rover. In 2013, astrobiologist Dr Louisa Preston, now Head of Planetary Science at Mullard Space Science Laboratory (UCL), came up with the idea for an educational exhibit designed to explore how we might someday grow food on Mars.
The plan was for the exhibit to be a plastic geodesic dome, filled with a beautiful, peaceful garden full of different types of plants, fruits, vegetables and flowers, all growing on red soil. Informational displays would explain about the plants, how they might grow on Mars, and the various tools we need to garden on Mars.
It would be tended by an AstroGardening rover, a working prototype automated to be planting a garden, so people could see it in action. Louisa was designing and building the rover with her project partner - installation designer, maker and guerilla gardener Vanessa Harden. They needed £10,000 to develop the exhibit itself - plants, soil and the dome. Sadly that never materialised, and all that remains now are the plans. For a moment there, however, Dr Preston had one of the best nicknames you could ever hope for: “The Guerilla Astrogardener”.
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