The EDEN ISS consortium will design and test essential CEA technologies using an International Standard Payload Rack (ISPR) cultivation system for potential testing on-board the ISS. Furthermore, a Future Explo-ration Greenhouse (FEG) will be designed with respect to future planetary BLSS deployments. The technologies will be tested in a laboratory environment as well as at the highly-isolated Antarctic Neumayer Station III, operated by the Alfred Wegener Institute. A small and mobile container-sized test facility will be built in order to provide realistic mass flow relationships for the ISPR section and FEG. In addition to tech-nology development and validation, food safety and plant handling procedures will be developed. These are integral aspects of the interaction between the crew and plants within closed environments. In this sense, the ISS can be seen as a test-bed for long-duration space missions and future planetary outposts.
Read more