NASA Eyes Deep Space Potato Crops as Fresh Food for Mars Missions

Summary: NASA eyes deep space potato crops as fresh food sources for future Mars missions, according to a NASA feature article published Wednesday, Feb. 17.

Artist’s concept of hydroponic, LED-lit greenhouse on Mars: Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), CC BY 2.0, via NASA

NASA is eyeing deep space potato crops as a fairly easy-to-grow source of fresh, safe food for future Mars missions. NASA’s appreciation of the hearty sprouting ability of potato buds, called eyes, predates stranded astronaut Mark Watney’s crop choice in 2015’s 10th-highest-grossing film, “The Martian.”

“The Martian movie and book conveyed a lot of issues regarding growing food and surviving on a planet far from the Earth. It’s brought plants back into the equation,” NASA plant physiologist Raymond "Ray" Wheeler tells public affairs writer Linda Herridge in a NASA John F. Kennedy Space Center feature article Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2016.

Deep space food crops share essential environmental growth requirements with their counterparts on Earth. Light, nutrients, water and a growth medium, such as soil or water, are essential for basic plant growth. Deep space food crops on Mars need a protective chamber, such as an atmospheric- and temperature-controlled greenhouse or habitat, to tackle the Red Planet’s environmental differences with Earth, such as less sunlight due to Mars’s increased distance from the Sun and a cold, thin surface atmosphere prone to intense dust storms.

Programmer Andy Weir’s debut 2011 science fiction novel, The Martian, and its same-name film adaptation in 2015 spotlight lone Mars occupant Mark Watney’s fertilization of Martian soil with vacuum-packed human waste to start his deep space potato crops. The currently known reality on Mars reveals loose surface material, known as regolith, that is laced heavily with undesirable perchlorates and other impurities. Use of Martian soil for growing deep space crops requires removal of these impurities.

Specializing in the botany subdiscipline of plant physiology, or functioning, at NASA’s John F. Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island, Florida, since 1988, Dr. Wheeler suggests the possibility of raising deep space potato crops via a hydroponic growing system, in water, rather than with the traditional horticultural medium of soil.

Dr. Wheeler began his career with NASA at the Kennedy Space Center’s Biomass Production Chamber (BPC), formerly a hypobaric, or altitude, test chamber used during the Mercury Space Program (Oct. 7, 1958 to June 12, 1963). The chamber’s retrofitted interior allows for two plant-growing spaces in a controlled environment that mimics deep space’s harsh, resource-deficient conditions. The artificially lit chamber relies on a hydroponic system of water and nutrient solution for growing crops.

Dr. Wheeler’s experiments with potatoes reveal the tuber’s receptivity to extreme hydroculture.

“With potatoes, it was a little bit more interesting in the sense that you can’t use systems that require a lot of standing or deep water -- potatoes don’t like to be submerged, and we kept the nutrient water film very thin,” he explains.

NASA appreciates plants as critical bioregenerative life support systems (BLSS) for lunar, Mars and other future space missions. Easy growers, such as deep space potato crops, supply food and oxygen via photosynthesis and recycle waste water via transpiration within such closed ecosystems as space travel vehicles and other extraterrestrial structures.

Potatoes join other highly productive seed crops that are also easy growers, such as lettuce, soybeans and wheat, as ideal candidates for deep space crops.

“You could begin to grow potatoes, wheat and soybeans, things like that, and along with the salad crops, you could provide more of a complete diet,” Dr. Wheeler suggests as starter crops for deep space gardeners.

Red Norland potatoes in Biomass Production Chamber (BPC), Hanger L, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, 1992: Public Domain, NASA

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

artist’s concept of hydroponic, LED-lit greenhouse on Mars: Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), CC BY 2.0, via NASA @ http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/potatoes_in_space_greenhouse.jpg

Red Norland potatoes in Biomass Production Chamber (BPC), Hanger L, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, 1992: NASA, Public Domain, via NASA @ http://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-plant-researchers-explore-question-of-deep-space-food-crops

For further information:

"About Project Mercury." NASA > Missions.
Available @ https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mercury/missions/program-toc.html

Ghose, Tia. "'The Martian': What Would It Take to Grow Food on Mars?" Live Science > Space. Oct. 9, 2015.
Available @ http://www.livescience.com/5244-growing-food-on-mars.html

Herridge, Linda. "NASA Plant Researchers Explore Question of Deep-Space Food Crops." NASA > Feature > Journey to Mars. Feb. 17, 2016.
Available @ http://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-plant-researchers-explore-question-of-deep-space-food-crops

Lethbridge, Cliff. "Mercury MA-9 Fact Sheet." Spaceline > Flight Chron.
Available @ http://www.spaceline.org/flightchron/mercuryma9.html

NASA‏ @NASA. "What kinds of crops could be grown in space or on another planet? Our research seeks answers." Twitter. Feb. 17, 2016.
Available @ https://twitter.com/NASA/status/700116378657939457

Wells, Joel. "Biomass chamber sprouts wheat, potatoes in landmark study." Spaceport News, vol. 35, no. 13 (June 21, 1996): 3.
Available @ http://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00099284/00441