EDEN ISS - Ground Demonstration of Plant Cultivation Technologies and Operation in Space

Aims:
The overall goal of EDEN ISS is the adaptation, integration and demonstration of higher plant cultivation technologies and operation procedures for safe food production on-board ISS and for future human explo-ration missions. The following key technologies and procedures will be advanced beyond the state-of-the-art:

• Nutrient delivery systems
• LED lighting systems
• Bio-detection and decontamination systems
• Food quality and safety procedures
• Operation procedures for safe food production

Objectives:
Due to the necessity of validating key technologies for space greenhouses under mission relevant conditions and with representative mass flows, the EDEN ISS consortium defined six objectives:

1. Manufacturing a space analogue mobile test facility
2. Integration and test of an International Standard Payload Rack plant cultivation system for future tests on-board ISS and a Future Exploration Greenhouse for planetary habitat
3. Adaptation, integration, fine-tuning and demonstration of key technologies
4. Development and demonstration of operational techniques and processes for higher plant cultivation to achieve safe and high-quality food
5. 5. Study of microbial behaviour and countermeasures within plant cultivation chambers
6. 6. Actively advancing knowledge related to human spaceflight and transformation of research re-sults into terrestrial applications

Strategic expected achievements:
The proposed EDEN ISS project provides several benefits over the current state-of-the-art while advancing European technological competency by:

• improving the Technology Readiness Level (TRL) to 6 of key technologies for plant cultivation to be deployed in future BLSS,
• developing an ISPR cultivation system in preparation for future deployment on-board the ISS,
• manufacturing an in-situ plant production system to provide year-round fresh food supplementation for Neumayer Station III Antarctic crews,
• enhancing yield per production area while minimizing energy and resource requirements,
• utilizing the mobile test facility and its integrated subsystems to analyse the overall biomass production, resource use and crew time in a highly integrated plant production module,
• establishment of an international research partnership between Europe and Canada,
• leveraging the idea-to-market capacities by facilitating the interaction between space actors with non-space actors as well as SMEs in order to strengthen European competitiveness in this field,
• strengthening European research efforts within the BLSS domain while remaining complementary to pre-sent research initiatives (e.g. MELiSSA @ ESA, CAB @ ASI, FCU @ TAS-I, :envihab @ DLR).

Potential market areas for strengthening European competitiveness:
The following terrestrial markets and applications will benefit from EDEN ISS: full control of growth environment (increased resource efficiency), food quality and safety technologies and procedures, molecular farming and especially the present megatrend urban agriculture (e.g. vertical farming).

Project consortium:

• German Aerospace Center (DLR) - Institute for Space Systems (Germany)
• German Aerospace Center (DLR) - Institute for Aerospace Medicine (Germany)
• Liquifer Systems Group (Austria)
• Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (Italy)
• University of Guelph (Canada)
• Alfred-Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (Germany)
• Airbus Defence and Space (Germany)
• Thales Alenia Space Italia (Italy)
• AeroSekur (Italy)
• Wageningen University and Research (The Netherlands)
• Heliospectra (Sweden)
• Limerick institute of Technology (Ireland)
• Telespazio (Italy)

Scientific Advisory Board:

• Dr. S. De Pascale - University of Naples (Italy)
• Dr. R. Wheeler - NASA (USA)
• Dr. G. Giacomelli - University of Arizona (USA)
• Dr. H.-C. Gunga - Charité (Germany)
• Dr. A. Tikhomirov - Russian Academy of Sciences - Siberian Branch (Russia)
• Dr. Y. Kitaya - Osaka Prefecture University (Japan)

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