TThree robots are growing vegetables on the roof of a student building at the University of Melbourne. As I watch, a mechanical arm hovering above the crop like a nail clipping machine at an amusement park sprays carefully measured amounts of water onto the plant.
Although the vegetables themselves look pretty terrestrial: cos lettuce, basil, coriander, and worm-eaten kale, they're actually prototypes for a groundbreaking research mission to grow fresh food in space.
Project leader Professor Sigfredo Fuentes bends down to pluck a tiny caterpillar from a kale leaf. “We had a big infestation of cabbage moth last week, but that's okay. The kale is just here to distract us from the other vegetables.”
Professor Fuentes is a well-named member of the Australian Research Council Space Plant Center of Excellence, a seven-year collaboration between five Australian universities. The center partners with 38 organizations, including NASA, to crack the code for fresh, nutritious “space food.” ”. It is a food that has not been heat stabilized (heat is used to destroy harmful microorganisms), irradiated, or provided in freeze-dried packs. You've seen it before, right?'' Fuentes said. “Porridge to eat on board? That's kind of what we're dealing with there.”
Space porridge may be fine for short-term voyages, but as NASA plans manned flights to the Moon and Mars within the next few decades, scientists are looking to find a better solution. It is being In other words, growing food in space. Potentially indefinitely.
“You have to think in terms of time and weight. Mars takes three years round trip. Each astronaut is allocated about 850 kg on the spacecraft, which includes all food, equipment and everything else. included,” Fuentes said. “We need to find ways to make food not only healthier and tastier, but also recyclable and sustainable.”
Problems also arise when people have to eat the same thing over and over again, even with a little rotation of similar foods. Research shows that food diversity is very important for astronauts. Menu fatigue can lead to problems such as loss of appetite, weight loss, and nutritional deficiencies, especially if you live in a metal box floating in existential darkness.
To solve this mystery, a team at the University of Melbourne, including Dr Claudia Gonzalez Viejo and Dr Nil Lipovetsky, used an open source robotic agricultural machine called FarmBot, along with a combination of digital sensors, AI and facial analysis. , food grows in specific conditions, and how microgravity affects the experience of eating it.
Each Farmbot can be programmed to plant seeds, irrigate efficiently, harvest crops, spray for diseases, and even record things like temperature and growth rate. Lipovetsky strolled over and handed me a delicate circuit board that looked very expensive. I try not to drop it. “This is our electronic nose,” he says. “You can ‘sniff’ the different scent profiles emitted by plants. Combined with FarmBot's soil sensor, you'll know exactly what each plant needs at any given time. ”
“The idea is to automate everything for long-term missions,” Fuentes adds. “Imagine a smart refrigerator in space, where everything from antibiotics to painkillers to plastics is grown and extracted from plants. [The e-nose] It senses when stocks are low and automatically starts growing food and materials. Astronauts don't have to be agronomists, everything is covered using AI. ”
In addition to microencapsulation, the research team is also looking at 3D printing food made from organic materials. “Willy Wonka's lollipop stuff is like a three-course meal, right?” Fuentes laughs. “Using microencapsulation, we can now release different flavors, allowing each aroma or taste to reach the tongue at different times.”
NASA has long recognized the benefits of microencapsulation, but Wonka-style pill foods are still being researched. It's hard to say when this technology will take off.
Our next stop was one of the university's “immersion rooms.” In a semi-circular room with curved walls extending 180 degrees, the team will project rotating close-up images of the Earth taken from low Earth orbit. In the center of the room, filled with atmospheric blue light, is what I came here to try. It is a so-called “zero gravity chair” used to simulate a microgravity position. It turned out to be less high-tech than I expected. “Recliner” might be a more accurate term.
“Believe it or not, this is the best way to simulate the effects of microgravity on Earth,” Fuentes says. “And it only costs him about $100. It's great for a siesta.”
The chair tilted me back 170 degrees, and just as I crossed the point of equilibrium, I felt the fluid in my inner ear make a tingling noise. All I can see is the black, slowly rotating curve of the Earth. Then a touchscreen tablet was shoved in front of my face. This is the second half of the ARC Center's research activities. To measure the sensory effects of food in space, we need to have people eat food in an environment similar to space. Today I'm going to try out Fuentes' flagship project, Space Beer.
A camera on a tablet measures my blood pressure, heart rate, and facial expression as I drink a Heineken upside down from a kid's sippy cup (replaced by today's beer, as the team's first batch of home-brewed beer is still being brewed) (experiments) using commercially available beer). Everything is managed through the biosensor app. I record my experiences on my tablet, choosing from a list of emojis that seem to represent everything from mild contentment to abject fear.
The team will use this data to help build algorithmic models, so-called digital twins, that can predict how humans will react to certain plant-based foods in space. It's not just the taste, but also the emotions and feelings that arise in the person who eats it. If successful, this data will feed into NASA's Artemis program for long-term missions to the Moon and Mars.
It's hard to say exactly when the team's labor in space will bear fruit, so to speak – interstellar agriculture is not something to be rushed – but the project involves collecting research results and developing a variety of plant species. It takes seven years to test performance. . This should synchronize well with NASA's schedule. The U.S. government agency aims to send a crewed mission to Mars as early as next decade.
Fuentes says it's not just about nutrition. “One of the plants we are working with is strawberries. The scent of strawberries can evoke an emotional response, which is very important for astronauts…In the dark, strawberries feel like home. It smells like.”