Design of an Autonomous and Timed Water Delivery System in Microgravity

Auteurs-es

  • William Elke Milwaukee School of Engineering
  • Maia Heineck Milwaukee School of Engineering
  • Jonah Meffert Milwaukee School of Engineering
  • Ellie Monaghan Milwaukee School of Engineering
  • Jason Palesse Milwaukee School of Engineering

DOI :

https://doi.org/10.17307/wsc.v1i1.309

Mots-clés :

Microgravity, Design, Veggie, International Space Station, outredgeous, International Space Salads, ISSa, ISS, autonomous, mechanical, HERBS, Biospace

Résumé

For long-duration, manned, space exploration missions to be feasible, farming techniques in space must become reliable and fruitful. The NASA Project Veggie team currently runs experiments on the International Space Station (ISS) in order to better understand how plants react to a microgravity environment. Current watering strategies on the ISS involve manual watering of all plants by the crewmembers. This poses a problem because watering plants must be scheduled into the crewmembers’ days which means less time to work, etc. The objective of Team International Space Salads (ISSa) was to create a device and prove that it could function in microgravity without electricity to autonomously water the plants in order to allow for schedule flexibility of the ISS crewmembers and to lay the foundation for watering systems for deep-space travel. The final device did not function fully as planned, however, the plant growing, surface tension experiments, and the device collectively progressed the multi-year project to a state where successive teams would have the knowledge and tools necessary to create a fully functioning device.

Références

Hsin, W. L., Sheng, Y. J., Lin, S. Y., & Tsao, H. K. (2004, March). Surface tension increment due to solute addition. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15089302

ISSa (a), Team, 2019, “Design of an Autonomous and Timed Water Delivery System in Microgravity – Winter Design Report.” Milwaukee School of Engineering.

ISSa (b), Team, 2019, “Design of an Autonomous and Timed Water Delivery System in Microgravity – Spring Addendum.” Milwaukee School of Engineering.

Okur, H., Chen, Y., Wilkins, D., & Roke, S. (2017). The Jones-Ray effect reinterpreted: Surface tension minima of low ionic strength electrolyte solutions are caused by electric field induced water-water correlations. Chemical Physics Letters,684, 433-442. doi:10.1016/j.cplett.2017.06.018

Payne, J., Sterling, T., 2004, “Water Potential in Plants.” New Mexico State University.

“The International Space Station Advanced Resistive Exercise Device,” NASA. [Online]. Available: https://technology.nasa.gov/patent/MSC-TOPS-59. [Accessed: 18-Feb-2019].

Vegetable Production System (Veggie). (2018, August 29). Retrieved from https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/383.html

Veggie PONDS (PONDS). (2018). Retrieved from https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Investigation. html?#id=7581

White, F. M., 2001, Fluid Mechanics, McGraw-Hill Education, New York, NY, Chap. 6

Téléchargements

Publié-e

2020-03-16

Comment citer

Elke, W., Heineck, M., Meffert, J., Monaghan, E., & Palesse, J. (2020). Design of an Autonomous and Timed Water Delivery System in Microgravity. Proceedings of the Wisconsin Space Conference, 1(1). https://doi.org/10.17307/wsc.v1i1.309

Numéro

Rubrique

Physics and Engineering