Grow lettuce on Mars to boost astronaut morale, says London space architect

Teams on the International Space Station have already experimented growing and eating fresh salad leaves to supplement their bland rations
Concept design showing circular Martian farming pod inspired by library archive shelves
Hassell Studio

The earthly crunch of a lettuce leaf could help boost morale for the first settlers on Mars as they try to stay alive 140 million miles from home, a London space architect said today.

Xavier De Kestelier, head of design technology at Shoreditch-based Hassell Studio, believes a little taste of Earth council help lift Martian astronauts’ spirits when the first boots eventually step on to the Red Planet to found a colony.

Hassell Studio is part of an international effort to find innovative ways to sustain human life on Mars ahead of future missions proposed by SpaceX - with tycoon Elon Musk warning first settlers have "a good chance" of dying on the mission.

Lettuce and rocket salad leaves have already been grown and eaten by Nasa astronauts on the International Space Station, which takes about a month to cultivate.

Mr De Kestelier’s morale-boosting concept followed interviews with British scientists living through Antarctic winters on the Halley VI research station, who said growing and eating “tactile” fresh lettuce pep them up after weeks existing on bland long-life rations.

He said: “For a Mars mission you would still have astronauts bringing their own food.

“But it gives advantages for people to be around green stuff, to be around plants.

“It psychologically has an effect on humans.

“(From) conversations I had with people of the British Antarctic Survey who stayed in Halley VI, they grew lettuce.

This concept design shows how 3D-printed pods sustaining human life could link together
Hassell Studio

“They could not sustain themselves from the food they grew, but they just liked something crunchy, something tactile to eat.

“It was just to get a different type of food, having a bit of salad once a week actually lifted their spirits.

“Little extras of fresh fruit and veg are important.”

The London studio’s 3D-printed circular Mars farm design, developed with Cranfield University engineers, uses 7ft-high stacked racks with a similar easy-sliding powered system as library archive shelves.

3D printers, as seen on the right, are proposed to create building bricks using Martian dust 
Hassell Studio

The practice’s habitat design, submitted for a Nasa competition, uses circular pods to help withstand extreme air pressure in the Martian atmosphere, which is 100 times less dense than on Earth.

Pod building bricks would be created using industrial 3D printers, with “swarms” of robots sent to forage dust and then bond it together to help eight astronauts survive a three-year roundtrip.

Mr De Kestelier said: “The cost of every kilogram you bring to Mars is huge, so you have to travel light and try to use as much as possible from local materials.”

In 2015, astronauts aboard the ISS propagated and ate the first lettuce grown in space, which took 33 days grown under LED lights.

Airlock chambers for growing in space, from "nanolabs" the size of a shoebox to as big as a diving bell, are being developed
Nanoracks

Now US-based Nanoracks is building airlocked "nanolabs" for Nasa and SpaceX that can be used to grow salads and can be remotely-operated by ground control, starting at £4,000 for the tiniest cube-sized horticultural experiments.

Michael Lewis, Nanoracks chief innovation officer, told the Standard: “We did an experiment to fly trimmings of arugula (rocket), a great little plant, which grew at a good rate.

“It’s a great supplement for the astronauts.”

ISS experiments are also studying how plants grow in microgravity, as in space they do not receive the gravitational signal for their roots to shoot downwards, leading to mutations.

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