Moon Plants as Model System for Life Support to Enable Human Exploration

Abstract

We propose to develop a plant growth chamber for the Moon. Our goal is to support germination over a 5-day period in a spacecraft on the Moon. The system will validate the ability of plants to provide fundamental life support for future human exploration. The autonomous system provides basic environmental control to grow the plants under harsh lunar conditions characterized by high radiation and partial gravity.Several innovative technologies are brought together for this lunar plant growth module; solar concentrators that allow light to get to the plants while increasing the power of solar arrays by 2-3 times, wireless communications that allow a sealed environment to communicate with the spacecraft, and a strain of plants tailored to survive lunar night.This integration of new technology to support plant growth ultimately contributes to human exploration.