If we hope to someday inhabit other planets, astronauts will need more sources of nourishment than the packets of freeze-dried space food they can take with them. It's not just the nutritional value of fresh produce that has NASA interested in growing greens -- researchers think that astronauts would also get a psychological boost from farming.
To that end, NASA collaborated with researchers at the University of Arizona to design an inflatable greenhouse that can be deployed in space and offer astronauts a sustainable bounty of fresh vegetables.
The greenhouse prototype was built as a "bioregenerative life support system" -- meaning it recycles air, waste, and water. As astronauts breathe out, they release carbon dioxide, which the plants use to generate oxygen through photosynthesis. Water flows through the roots and back to a storage tank where it's oxygenated and fortified in a constant cycle. To avoid radiation, the greenhouses would likely be buried under soil, and so would require an artificial light source.
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