The current study focuses on the design of a deployable greenhouse on Mars. The distinctive feature of the proposed solution is its possibility to adapt itself to its surrounding and optimize the use of in-situ resources by literally “growing” with the plants it contains. The biological needs of a selection of plants, the constraints and the available martian resources have been described. A mission scenario has been proposed from the landing on Mars surface to the end of the crop exploitation.

This project is solving the Deployable Greenhouse challenge.


Description

Note: the following description is a summary of our full report.

Team

POM is the acronym for Plants On Mars. We are a team of five green funky guys from different areas in France (Toulouse, Bordeaux, Albi) and with different specialities:

  • Alexandre: PhD in space propulsion with a great passion for Mars exploration
  • Bastien: Computer-Human Interaction engineer and web developer
  • Camille: Mechanical engineer
  • Joris: PhD in applied mathematics and space and aeronautic engineer
  • Laurent: Computer sciences engineer specialized in embedded systems

Objectives

The goal of this project is to define how the greenhouse will manage the plant growing, from the the landing on Mars to the end of the first life cycle of the plants.

Context

With the possibility of human spaceflight going beyond the Moon, and potentially going to Mars, it is necessary to be able to offer astronaut a self-sustained environment that would provide a regenerative life support system, and more specifically food supplies. Because Mars is a completely different environment to Earth, scientists and engineers have to devise systems to allow the growing of plants in hostile places.

Concept

The distinctive feature of the proposed solution is its possibility to adapt itself to its surrounding and to optimize the use of in situ resources by literally “growing” with the plants it contains. We describe the biological needs of a selection of plants, the constraints and the available martian resources. We propose a mission scenario from the landing on Mars surface to the end of the crop exploitation.

In order to achieve this sub-objective, we are using both current and innovative technologies.

Embedded technologies

  • Photovoltaic cells
  • Windmill
  • Drilling machine
  • Pump
  • Liquid lens
  • Shape memory alloys

Chronology of a typical mission

  • T-1 : Landing area identification (in accordance with the needed natural resources)
  • T0 : Landing and greenhouse deployment
  • T0+1 : Bootstrap the greenhouse
  • T0+2 : Crops germination
  • T0+3 : Plans development regulation
  • T0+4 : End of cycle

Conclusions

We have designed an adaptative greenhouse for the autonomous farming using in situ resources of Mars. The greenhouse is designed with the optimal use of limited resources in mind. To simplify our solution, only one crop type per greenhouse is allowed.

Our Mars adaptative greenhouse has a flexible structure of variable size. It can grow as the crop it protects.

The greenhouse works in two phases. The first phase creates the necessary condition for the ecosystem. In the second phase, the greenhouse offer the best possible conditions, considering the available resources, for growing plants. Several sub-systems produce energy to power the greenhouse. Whatever the current environmental conditions on Mars, the greenhouse is able to take benefits from the situation. From the greenhouse point of view, the hostile environment of Mars is only a source of diversification of the resources it can use.



Project Information

License: Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0
Source Code/Project URL: https://github.com/SpaceAppsChallengeToulouse/GreenHouseTlse

Resources

Report - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Pj139t1wzlqixvdrTC-HRXfHNol3AwtUcHahzEb2S00/edit?usp=sharing
Short film scenario - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vpahoyTWZJxSTZMOCZEpEpuUfZ_COo0uIr-jUxyTR18/edit?usp=sharing
Post-challenge debriefing - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mU0RwwGKcX966Z3eESkiLfstXiTD3I6ihx1tbS2LOKo/edit?usp=sharing
3D models - http://bgatellier.fr/share/other/SpaceAppsChallenge2013/SpaceApps2013POM3Dmodels.zip
3D model (PDF) - http://bgatellier.fr/share/other/SpaceAppsChallenge2013/SpaceApps2013POM3DGreenhouse.pdf