Integration of a Higher Plant Chamber into the European Space Agency's MELiSSA Pilot Plant: The Canadian Role in Advanced Life Support Test-Bed Development
Abstract
The European Space Agency's Micro-Ecological Life Support System Alternative (MELiSSA) project has been conceived as a tool for developing the technology of future biological life support systems required for long-term human space exploration missions to the Moon or Mars. The main life support functions of MELiSSA are the recycling of waste (inedible plant biomass, human excrement), carbon dioxide and minerals and the production of food, fresh water and air revitalization. Based on the principle of an aquatic ecosystem, MELiSSA is comprised of four microbial compartments and a higher plant compartment integrated in a closed loop. Each compartment is studied, designed and demonstrated at laboratory scale before being scaled-up for subsequent integration into the MELISSA Pilot Plant (MPP) at the Universitat Aut`noma de Barcelona. Work related to higher plant cultivation systems, o which have been historically focussed at the University of Guelph's Controlled Environment Systems Research Facility (CESRF), has included design of the HPC for the MPP, the metabolic characterization of MELiSSA candidate crops and the validation of theoretical gas exchange and nutrient dynamic models, The presented paper will review some of the recent data and HPC design work of CESRF conducted as part of Canada's involvement in the MELiSSA program and its partnership in the development of the MPP terrestrial demonstration test-bed.
- Publication:
-
37th COSPAR Scientific Assembly
- Pub Date:
- 2008
- Bibcode:
- 2008cosp...37.3437W