How Farming in Space Can Improve Water Management on Earth

Chances are, you have advanced, NASA-bred technology originally designed for low-Earth orbit missions just lying around the house. Maybe even in your pocket.

It’s true. Like most efforts on the frontiers of human innovation, the space program has produced technologies that are as beneficial here on Earth as they are “out there.”

They’re called spinoffs, and you use one of them every time you clean the mess of alien crumbs and furballs invading your couch cushions. The cordless handheld vacuum, launched commercially in 1979, was based on technology originally designed to collect lightweight samples on the Moon.

As for what’s in your pocket, one-third of all camera phones use components engineered to produce accurate, scientific-level images for experiments aboard spacecraft.

Your wireless headphones? Designed to keep astronauts’ hands free and unwieldy cords out of the way in zero gravity.

Farming, In Space

While we may see camera phones as “mission critical” to our daily lives, space program spinoffs have the potential for more important and far-reaching benefits. Specifically, agriculture in space could give us new tools to help conserve and manage Earth’s fresh water.

NASA scientists and research partners have been studying off-planet horticulture for decades. The reason is simple: preparations have already begun to send manned missions, and ultimately colonizers, to Mars.

Image Credit: NASA

For all their other-worldly quirks, Martians will still need to eat. Packing enough food or sending resupply missions would be too costly and a logistical nightmare. Thus, scientists are learning how to farm—and create a sustainable food supply—in space.  

As if farming wasn’t already hard enough on Earth, growing crops outside our atmosphere presents new challenges and requires new technologies.

Prototype Lunar Greenhouse. Image Credit: NASA/University of Arizona

Here are three water management tools, or practices, that might end up being just as critical to life (and agriculture) on Earth as they will be elsewhere in the universe.

TALKING PLANTS

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) don’t have time to spend fretting about watering the plants. Are the leafy passengers getting enough to drink? Too much? There’s no room in the schedule for constant monitoring and NASA doesn’t do guesswork.

Instead, the plants tell the astronauts when they’re thirsty. NASA research partners designed a leaf sensor that sends a text when the plant needs water.

Modern agriculture practices already give tech-forward farmers the ability to assess soil moisture, but electrical pulses from these sensors measure leaf thickness as an indicator of actual water content inside the plant.

The sensors, now commercially available, are still used primarily for research, but it won’t be long before prices drop and crops are telling farmers when they need a drink. More importantly, farmers will also know when their plants aren’t thirsty, conserving valuable freshwater resources.

FLOATING PLANTS

No, leafy greens aren’t drifting through the void of space, but they are floating. Aeroponic and hydroponic experiments aboard the ISS have grown plants without a granular medium, such as soil.

Plant roots in an aeroponic system are suspended in air, receiving food from a nutrient-rich mist. Hydroponics, in contrast, feature roots submerged in a nutritious water solution. While neither approach originated in low-Earth orbit missions, the science and agricultural relevance behind each was furthered by the space program.

NASA-led experiments were the first to use light emitting diodes (LEDs) to grow crops. LED technology then helped light the hydroponic growth bays that were part of the Biomass Production Chamber (BPC) at the Kennedy Space Center. The BPC was one of the first demonstrations of vertical farming, the cultivation of hydroponic (or aeroponic) plants in stacked layers within a controlled environment. Vertical farming, in its own right, has the potential to change the food production landscape, conserving acreage while allowing crops to be grown in non-arable regions or urban food deserts.

The BPC was also where experiments established the viability of growing a wide variety of plants beyond those leafy greens, including the hydroponic growth of subterranean crops like potatoes and sweet potatoes.

As for the benefits of these “floating” farms? You could say they’re out of this world.

Thanks to the controlled environment, plants can also grow year-round. From 1988 to 1996, the BPC worked almost non-stop for over 1,200 days. And aeroponic plants can grow as much as three times faster than those in soil. With the advanced growth rate and year-round “season,” researchers produced six tomato harvests per year^B, compared to the traditional one to two crop cycles.

Aeroponics and hydroponics aren’t just for experimentation, and they aren’t merely a hobby pursuit or a quaint theory for diversifying agricultural production. They’re working, at scale. Vietnam became the first nation to make aeroponics part of its farming infrastructure, using the approach to advance its minituber potato production. With little farmland, this “space-age” approach is helping the country produce certified, disease-free potato seed, or minitubers, to meet increasing demand while conserving fresh water.

LIFE SUPPORT PLANTS

Perhaps the most intriguing studies—those with the power to dramatically affect water conservation and quality efforts—are those for NASA’s Controlled Ecological Life Support System (CELSS).

As the name suggests, life supports life. Astronauts feed the plants and the plants feed the astronauts.

It’s an almost entirely closed loop system, a self-sustaining approach where most of the inputs are recycled. The exception for NASA’s CELSS experiments to date is energy. The plants’ LED grow lights are powered by external sources, but the water is entirely reclaimed.

Liquid astronaut waste (hey, it’s natural) is cleaned, processed, and fed to plants. The plants then create humidity that is condensed and turned into drinkable water. It’s a replica of Earth’s water cycle, all happening within a controlled environment about the size of a bedroom.

There are approximately 100 vertical farms operating in the U.S. alone, with more around the globe. And there’s over 230 million square feet^D of greenhouse agricultural production currently in operation. All of which use recycling practices inspired by, or technology born from, the space program’s efforts in extraterrestrial farming.

Image Credit: NASA

GIANT LEAPS FOR RESOURCE CONSERVATION

Innovation has a funny way of being even more beneficial than originally planned. Who knew a NASA Moon dust collector would end up in almost every household?

Maybe mankind’s collective interest in seeking a second galactic address will have its own unintended benefits. Each small step toward farming on other worlds just might help us continue to get more efficient at using the resources we have on this one.

Sources

A  NASA
B  NASA Spinoff
C  AgFunder News
D Pop Sci