Browsing by Author "Zabel, Paul"
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Item Crewtime in a Space Greenhouse based on the Operation of the EDEN ISS Greenhouse in Antarctica(49th International Conference on Environmental Systems, 2019-07-07) Zabel, Paul; Zeidler, Conrad; Vrakking, Vincent; Dorn, Markus; Schubert, DanielThe EDEN ISS project partners deployed a space greenhouse analogue at the Neumayer Station III in Antarctica in January 2018. The greenhouse is incorporated in two interconnected 20 foot shipping containers and positioned around 400 meters away from the research station. All subsystems required for plant cultivation are inside this so called Mobile Test Facility. The cultivation area of around 12.5 m² is arranged in a shelf-like structure in one of the containers, while the other container houses the subsystems and a small working area. Between February and November 2018 one of the authors was the only on-site operator of the greenhouse. In that time it was his responsibility to cultivate various plants and to execute numerous experiments. One of the experiments was the determination of the crewtime required for plant cultivation. A formula to calculate the crewtime use inside a space greenhouse has been developed. This paper also presents crewtime values for various activities related to the operation of a space greenhouse. The focus is on the tasks related to plant cultivation such as sowing, pruning, harvesting and cleaning. Crewtime has been measured independently for different crop species, because each crop species requires different tasks to be performed during cultivation. Additionally, the task schedule and related crewtime of complete workdays have been documented at several occasions during the nine months of operation of the EDEN ISS greenhouse in Antarctica.Item Design of a Containerized Greenhouse Module for Deployment to the Neumayer III Antarctic Station(44th International Conference on Environmental Systems, 2014-07-13) Bamsey, Matthew T.; Zabel, Paul; Zeidler, Conrad; Poulet, Lucie; Schubert, Daniel; Kohlberg, Eberhard; Graham, ThomasDesigns for an Antarctic plant production system to be deployed at Germany’s Neumayer Station III are presented. Characterization and testing of several key controlled environment agriculture technologies are ongoing at the German Aerospace Center’s Institute of Space Systems. Subsystems under development at the Evolution and Design of Environmentally-Closed Nutrition-Sources (EDEN) laboratory include, tuned LED lighting, aeroponic nutrient delivery, ion-selective sensors and modular growth pallets. The Antarctic greenhouse module baseline form factor is a standard sea shipping container, which allows for use of nominal Antarctic logistics networks. The facility will be fixed onto a specially constructed platform and co-located near the Alfred Wegner Institute’s Neumayer Station III. The plant production facility will be operated year-round with maximum production per unit volume achieved through the deployment of modular grow units in a stackable rack architecture. In such a configuration the greenhouse module system can provide several kilograms of fresh edible biomass per day. Forty foot and 20 ft container configurations are described as well as the general design requirements, including specifics relevant to operations at Neumayer III. Successful deployment of such a facility will further the technology readiness and operational experience of space-based bioregenerative life support systems. Finally, the general design is presented in the context of an historical review of past Antarctic plant production facilities. This first known inventory of documented Antarctic plant production facilities, organizes the facilities with respect to Antarctic station, dates of operation, internal/external configuration and estimated production area.Item Early Trade-offs and Top-Level Requirement Definition for Antarctic Greenhouses(46th International Conference on Environmental Systems, 2016-07-10) Bamsey, Matthew; Zabel, Paul; Zeidler, Conrad; Vrakking, Vincent; Schubert, Daniel; Kohlberg, Eberhard; Stasiak, Michael; Graham, ThomasThe development of plant production facilities for extreme environments presents challenges not typically faced by developers of greenhouses in more traditional environments. Antarctica represents one of the most inhospitable environments on Earth and presents unique challenges to facility developers with respect to environmental regulations, logistics, waste management, and energy use. The unique challenges associated with plant production in Antarctica heavily influence the selection of subsystem components and technologies as well as the operational paradigms used to operate the facilities. This paper details a wide array of the early design choices and trade-offs that have arisen in the development of Antarctic plant production facilities. Specific requirements and several guidelines stemming from the Antarctic Treaty’s Protocol on Environment Protection and their influence on Antarctic plant production facilities are described. A review of guidelines for Antarctic greenhouses published by several national Antarctic operators is also described. The specific technology choices of several past and present Antarctic greenhouses are summarized, as are the general operational strategies, such as solid and nutrient solution waste handling. Specific lessons learned input was compiled directly from developers and operators of a number of these facilities. A discussion on the Antarctic climate, differences in Antarctic installation locations, internal versus external station plant growth facilities, preshipment testing programs, carbon dioxide enrichment and numerous other Antarctic facility design trade-offs are elaborated. It is hoped that this paper can serve as a useful checklist for future Antarctic plant production facility developers.Item EDEN ISS Rack-like food production unit: results after mission in Antarctica(49th International Conference on Environmental Systems, 2019-07-07) Boscheri, Giorgio; Lobascio, Cesare; Zabel, Paul; Marchitelli, Giovanni; Saverino, AntonioPlant cultivation in large-scale closed environments is challenging and several key technologies necessary for space-based plant production are not yet space-qualified or remain in early stages of development. The Horizon2020 EDEN ISS project aims at development and demonstration of higher plant cultivation technologies, suitable for near term deployment on the International Space Station (ISS) and, in a longer term perspective, within Moon and Mars habitats. The EDEN ISS consortium, as part of the performed activities, has designed and built a plant cultivation system having form, fit and function of a European Drawer Rack 2 (EDR II) payload, with a modularity that would allow its incremental installation in the ISS homonymous rack, occupying from one-quarter rack to the full system. The developed system, named RUCOLA (Rack-like Unit for Consistent on-orbit Leafy crops Availability) was completed and tested in a laboratory environment in early 2017. The system was then operated in the highly-isolated German Antarctic Neumayer Station III, in a container-sized test facility to provide realistic mass flow relationships and interaction with a crewed environment. This paper describes the key results of the RUCOLA plant growth facility tests in Antarctica as a space-analogue environment.Item Effects on ECLSS Behavior caused by the Start-up of a Food Production Facility(2020 International Conference on Environmental Systems, 2020-07-31) Zabel, PaulIn the next decades humans will take on the challenges of venturing to the Moon, Mars and other planetary bodies in our solar system. The farther out and the longer the crewed missions get, the more effective is recycling of resource to provide life support for the humans travelling. One aspect is the production of food on-site during the mission to greatly reduce the resupply need from Earth. The cultivation of plants hereby is the preferred way. Plants do not only provide a large variety of food, but also consume the carbon dioxide exhaled by the crew and produce oxygen. The cultivation of plants in a closed environment is challenging, but recent experiments on Earth and on-board the ISS have shown the feasibility of such a system. Another aspect of plant cultivation in a crewed spacecraft or habitat is the influence of the crops on the ECLSS. Food production is only possible, when the plants are provided with the resources and environment necessary to thrive. Providing these resources in sustainable way means that the greenhouse subsystems are interconnected with the ECLSS. Consequently, the cultivation of plants has, depending on the amount of crops grown, a significant impact on the ECLSS (e.g. on the dimension of certain systems like the water recycling). This paper presents the results of a dynamic simulation of an ECLSS with an integrated greenhouse for crop cultivation. The focus lies on the start-up phase of this facility, because until the steady-state production is reached the impact of the greenhouse on the ECLSS is changing constantly and therefore the ECLSS has to cope with that.Item Energy and Power Demand of Food Production in Space based on Results of the EDEN ISS Antarctic Greenhouse(51st International Conference on Environmental Systems, 7/10/2022) Zabel, Paul; Vrakking, Vincent; Zeidler, Conrad; Schubert, DanielThe EDEN ISS greenhouse is a space-analogue test facility near the German Neumayer III station in Antarctica. The facility is part of the project of the same name and was designed and built since 2015 and eventually deployed in Antarctica in January 2018. The first operational phase of the greenhouse started on February the 7th and continued until the 20th of November 2018. The purpose of the facility is to enable multidisciplinary research on topics related to future plant cultivation on human space exploration missions. Research on food quality and safety, plant health monitoring, microbiology, system validation, human factors, horticultural sciences and resource demand were conducted. Part of the latter were measurements of the electrical energy and power demand. Those measurements were conducted on the facility and subsystem level, which were complemented by determining the demand of single components like LED lamps at different illumination settings. This paper describes the electrical energy and power demand during the experiment season between February and November 2018. Furthermore, the impact of these results on designing and planning future plant cultivation system in space are evaluated.Item Future Exploration Greenhouse Design of the EDEN ISS Project(47th International Conference on Environmental Systems, 2017-07-16) Zabel, Paul; Bamsey, Matthew; Zeidler, Conrad; Vrakking, Vincent; Schubert, Daniel; Romberg, OliverThe Future Exploration Greenhouse (FEG) is the heart of the international EDEN ISS project, which aims to investigate and validate techniques for plant cultivation in future bioregenerative life support systems. The EDEN ISS project partners designed and built the Mobile Test Facility (MTF), which consists of two modified 20 foot shipping containers. The FEG is integrated into one of these containers. It has a shelf-like plant cultivation system with up to four levels for growing plants and it has a cultivation area of roughly 12.5 m². The FEG is designed to accommodate differ-ent plant species ranging from leafy greens (e.g. lettuce, spinach) to tall growing plants (e.g. tomato, cucumber). The plants grow in customized trays which hold the plants in position and contain the plants’ roots. The trays can be connected to one of the two nutrient solution supply lines, each line providing a different nutrient mix. All plants grow in the same atmosphere and water-cooled LED lamps provide the light energy for photosynthesis. The FEG design has evolved from early designs in 2014 over the preliminary design by the end of 2015 to the final design which is described in this paper. Following assembly, integration and testing, the complete MTF will be shipped in October 2017 to Antarctica, where it will arrive in December 2017 and undergo a 12 month space analogue mission.Item Implications of different plant cultivation techniques for food production in space based on experiments in EDEN ISS(2020 International Conference on Environmental Systems, 2020-07-31) Zabel, Paul; Vrakking, Vincent; Zeidler, Conrad; Schubert, DanielThe EDEN ISS greenhouse is a space-analogue test facility near the German Neumayer III station in Antarctica. The facility is part of the project of the same name and was designed and built since 2015 and eventually deployed in Antarctica in January 2018. The first operational phase of the greenhouse started on February the 7th and continued until the 20th of November 2018. The purpose of the facility is to enable multidisciplinary research on topics related to future plant cultivation on human space exploration missions. Research on food quality and safety, plant health monitoring, microbiology, system validation, human factors and horticultural sciences was conducted. Part of the latter was an experiment to compare different plant cultivation techniques for lettuce and tomato plants. For lettuce two different harvest methods were applied, either batch harvesting of the fully grown lettuce heads or spread harvesting of mature leaves while leaving the plant alive to allow regrowth. The dwarf tomato plants were cultivated for three different durations. The short growth cycle ended right after the first set of fruits were harvested. The plants were then terminated and new plants sown. The longest duration cultivation involved several pruning events were old stems and leaves were removed from the plants allowing regrowth of new shoots. This paper compares the impact of the different cultivation techniques on the biomass output, the required crewtime and the required energy. The results show that depending on whether the goal is to optimize for highest biomass production, lowest energy demand or lowest crewtime demand some cultivation techniques are more favorable than others.Item Introducing EDEN ISS - A European project on advancing plant cultivation technologies and operations(45th International Conference on Environmental Systems, 2015-07-12) Zabel, Paul; Bamsey, Matthew; Zeidler, Conrad; Vrakking, Vincent; Johannes, Bernd-Wolfgang; Rettberg, Petra; Schubert, Daniel; Romberg, Oliver; Imhof, Barbara; Davenport, Robert; Hoheneder, Waltraut; Waclavicek, René; Gilbert, Chris; Hogle, Molly; Battistelli, Alberto; Stefanoni, Walter; Moscatello, Stefano; Proietti, Simona; Santi, Gugliemo; NAzzaro, Filomena; Fratianni, Florinda; Coppola, Raffaele; Dixon, Mike; Stasiak, Mike; Kohlberg, Eberhard; Mengedoht, Dirk; Bucchieri, Lorenzo; Mazzoleni, Erik; Fetter, Viktor; Hummel, Thomas; Boscheri, Giorgio; Massobrio, Federico; Lamantea, Matteo; Lobascio, Cesare; Petrini, Alessandro; Adami, Marco; Bonzano, Giuseppe; Fiore, Lorenzo; Dueck, Tom; Stanghellini, Cecilia; Bochenek, Grazyna; Gilley, Anthony; McKeon-Bennett, Michelle; Stutte, Gary; Larkin, Tracey; Moane, Siobhan; Murray, Patrick; Downey, Peter; Fortezza, Raimondo; Ceriello, AntonioPlant cultivation in large-scale closed environments is challenging and several key technologies necessary for space-based plant production are not yet space-qualified or remain in early stages of development. The EDEN ISS project foresees development and demonstration of higher plant cultivation technologies, suitable for future deployment on the International Space Station and from a long-term perspective, within Moon and Mars habitats. The EDEN ISS consortium will design and test essential plant cultivation technologies using an International Standard Payload Rack form factor cultivation system for potential testing on-board the International Space Station. Furthermore, a Future Exploration Greenhouse will be designed with respect to future planetary bio-regenerative life support system deployments. The technologies will be tested in a laboratory environment as well as at the highly-isolated German Antarctic Neumayer Station III. A small and mobile container-sized test facility will be built in order to provide realistic mass flow relationships. In addition to technology development and validation, food safety and plant handling procedures will be developed. This paper describes the goals and objectives of EDEN ISS and the different project phases and milestones. Furthermore, the project consortium will be introduced and the role of each partner within the project is explained.Item Main Performance Results of the EDEN ISS Rack-Like Plant Growth Facility(47th International Conference on Environmental Systems, 2017-07-16) Boscheri, Giorgio; Lamantea, Matteo Maria; Lobascio, Cesare; Volponi, Marco; Schubert, Daniel; Zabel, PaulItem Resource Consumption and Waste Production of the EDEN ISS Space Greenhouse Analogue during the 2018 Experiment Phase in Antarctica(2020 International Conference on Environmental Systems, 2020-07-31) Zeidler, Conrad; Vrakking, Vincent; Zabel, Paul; Bamsey, Matthew; Schubert, DanielEDEN ISS is a European project focused on advancing bio-regenerative life support systems, in particular plant cultivation in space. A mobile test facility was designed and built between March 2015 and October 2017. The facility incorporates a Service Section which houses several subsystems necessary for plant cultivation and the Future Exploration Greenhouse. The latter is built similar to a future space greenhouse and provides a fully controlled environment for plant cultivation. The facility was setup in Antarctica in January 2018 and successfully operated between February and November of the same year. During this approximately nine month period, 268 kg of fresh edible biomass was produced. The cultivation of crops requires a number of resources like water, nutrients and carbon dioxide, but also consumables such as cleaning agents, gloves and towels. The facility also produces waste in various forms such as waste water from cleaning, paper and plastic. In this paper the solid and liquid waste is compared with the resources needed for optimal crop growth on the approximately 12.5 m² of cultivation area inside the EDEN ISS facility. In total, approximately 18 kg of mineral salts were required to prepare the nutrient solution over this initial experimental period. In addition, more than 2,500 liters of reverse osmosis water was supplied to the facility over this period. The consumable waste from the bins inside the EDEN ISS facility consisted of around 9 kg of dry paper and 5 kg of plastic waste.Item Review and analysis of plant growth chambers and greenhouse modules for space(44th International Conference on Environmental Systems, 2014-07-13) Zabel, Paul; Bamsey, Matthew; Schubert, Daniel; Tajmar, MartinThe cultivation of higher plants occupies an essential role within bio-regenerative life support systems. It contributes to all major functional aspects by closing the different loops in a habitat like food production, CO2 reduction, O2 production, waste recycling and water management. Fresh crops are also expected to have a positive impact on crew psychological health. Plant material was first launched into orbit on unmanned vehicles as early as the 1960s. Since then, more than a dozen different plant cultivation experiments have been flown on crewed vehicles beginning with the launch of Oasis 1, in 1971. Continuous subsystem improvements and increasing knowledge of plant response to the spaceflight environment has led to the design of VEGGIE and the Advanced Plant Habitat, the latest in the series of plant growth chambers. The paper reviews the different designs and technological solutions implemented in higher plant flight experiments. They are analyzed with respect to their functional (e.g. illumination source, grow medium), operational (e.g. illumination period, air temperature) and performance parameters (e.g. growth area, biomass output per square meter). Using these analyses a comprehensive comparison is compiled to illustrate the development trends of controlled environment agriculture technologies in bio-regenerative life support systems, enabling future human long-duration missions into the solar system.Item Review of Antarctic Greenhouses and Plant Production Facilities: A Historical Account of Food Plants on the Ice(45th International Conference on Environmental Systems, 2015-07-12) Bamsey, Matthew T.; Zabel, Paul; Zeidler, Conrad; Gyimesi, Dávid; Schubert, Daniel; Kohlberg, Eberhard; Mengedoht, Dirk; Rae, Joanna; Graham, ThomasAntarctic crews have been transporting plants and their supporting infrastructure to Antarctic field sites since as early as 1902. More than 46 distinct plant production facilities have, at one time or another, operated in Antarctica. Production facilities have varied significantly in size, technical sophistication, and operational life. Many of these efforts have been driven by the expeditioners themselves, which clearly demonstrates the fundamental desire that people have to associate themselves with plants while living and working in inhospitable environments. The need for this biological association can be solely psychological, while at other times it is based on the more practical need for fresh food. Although the nature of plant growth activities has evolved with the implementation of increasingly stringent environmental regulations, there remains strong interest in deploying such systems within or near Antarctic stations. Current Antarctic plant growth facilities are predominately organized and administered at the national program level to ensure such regulations are adhered to. Nine hydroponic facilities are currently operating in Antarctica. This paper summarizes historic and existing Antarctic facilities by incorporating information from expeditioners, environmental assessment reports, direct communication with national contact points, as well as published reference documents, unpublished reports, and web-based sources. A description of the country operating the facility, the specific Antarctic station, as well as specific information with regard to the facility size and the nature/type of the deployed systems are provided. Looking towards the future of Antarctic plant growth facilities, a number of previously and currently planned Antarctic facilities are also reviewed. The potential for future Antarctic plant production systems are discussed and considered not only for food production but also as bioregenerative life support systems, in that they can provide supplemental station capacity for air and water regeneration. Antarctic testing can also advance the readiness of hardware and operational protocols for use in space-based systems, such as in orbit/transit or on the surface of the Moon and Mars.Item SCALISS: An European Tool for Automated Scaling of Life Support Systems(47th International Conference on Environmental Systems, 2017-07-16) Boscheri, Giorgio; Guarnieri, Vincenzo; Chirico, Stefano; Zabel, Paul; Lasseur, ChristopheDesigning the Environmental Control and Life Support System (ECLSS) for exploration missions to the interplanetary space is a complex task beginning from the definition of the needs (e.g. diet, safety, radiation level,..) up to the selection of technology possibilities. In this context a major issue is the influence of crew number and mission duration to the ECLSS design. These are the main reasons why during mission studies the design of the ECLSS system mostly starts from scratch. Uncertainties about requirements, functions and technologies most suitable for the mission lead to a high number of iterations before a baseline design can be achieved. The aim of the SCALISS study was to understand and investigate in ECLSS functionality, technologies and scalabilities in order to produce a robust initial design starting point for future Phase-A studies with an automated tool. The developed Java-based ECLSS sizing tool is described in this paper together with the validation case study results. The possible evolutions and interactions with the ALiSSE tool are also described.Item Service Section Design of the EDEN ISS Project(47th International Conference on Environmental Systems, 2017-07-16) Vrakking, Vincent; Bamsey, Matthew; Zabel, Paul; Zeidler, Conrad; Schubert, Daniel; Romberg, OliverThe international EDEN ISS project aims to investigate and validate techniques for plant cultivation in future bioregenerative life support systems. To this end the EDEN ISS project partners aim to design and build the Mobile Test Facility, which consists of two modified 20 foot shipping containers. One of these shipping containers is designated the Service Section and houses the bulk of the subsystem components, such as the Air Management System and Nutrient Delivery System, as well as a rack-sized plant cultivation system, which uses a standard International Space Station payload form factor. The subsystems within the Service Section ensure that the approximately 12.5 m² of cultivation area in the second container, the Future Exploration Greenhouse, have the proper environmental conditions, nutrients and illumination for optimal crop growth. The EDEN ISS project concluded its main design phase with a Critical Design Review in March 2016, thereafter proceeded into the hardware development and procurement phase of the project. This paper describes the final design of the Service Section at the start of the assembly, integration and testing phase, which will run until the complete Mobile Test Facility is shipped to Antarctica, where it arrives in December 2017, for a 12 month space analogue mission.Item Status and Future of the EDEN ISS Mobile Test Facility(2020 International Conference on Environmental Systems, 2020-07-31) Vrakking, Vincent; Zabel, Paul; Zeidler, Conrad; Schubert, Daniel; Dorn, MarkusWithin the EDEN ISS project an international consortium designed and built a (semi-)closed loop greenhouse, called the Mobile Test Facility, to investigate and validate techniques for plant cultivation in future bioregenerative life support systems. At the end of 2017 the Mobile Test Facility, consisting of two modified 20 foot shipping containers, was transported to the German Neumayer Station III in the Antarctic for testing in a space-analogue environment. Following arrival in the Antarctic in January 2018, and initial system check-out activities, the Mobile Test Facility began its first operational phase in February 2018 which was concluded in November 2018. During the following Antarctic summer season in January 2019 a maintenance crew went to Antarctica to overhaul some components of the facility. The first months of the winter season 2019 (February-April) the facility was not in use. Nominal operation continued in May the same year and went on until end of October. The nine people of the overwintering crew of the Neumayer Station III grew crops and maintained the greenhouse in that time. From December 2019 to February 2020, the next maintenance crew arrived from Europe bringing with them new components and resupply of consumables and spare parts. Nominal operation started again in February 2020 with the new overwintering crew taking over the operation of the greenhouse. This paper describes results from the 2019 and early 2020 overwintering seasons including an overview of produced biomass. Issues with the subsystems and according changes to the hardware are also described.Item Status of the EDEN ISS Greenhouse after on-site installation in Antarctica(48th International Conference on Environmental Systems, 2018-07-08) Schubert, Daniel; Bamsey, Matthew; Zabel, Paul; Vrakking, Vincent; Zeidler, ConradEDEN ISS is a European project focused on advancing bio-regenerative life support systems, in particular plant cultivation technologies and procedures for space and planetary habitats. Essential Controlled Environment Agriculture technologies were designed, developed and integrated within a Mobile Test Facility, consisting of two interconnected 20 ft shipping containers. The main EDEN ISS cultivation area is called the Future Exploration Greenhouse and is designed as a single cultivation room with unified environmental settings and a 17:7 h light-dark photoperiod. During an analogue test mission at the German Neumayer III research station in Antarctica, the greenhouse provides a variety of fresh pick-and-eat crops for the overwintering crew of 10 members. This is of particular importance during their 6-7 months long isolation phase, when no plane or ship resupply of the station occurs. This paper provides an overview of the as-built design configuration and outlines the main steps of the assembly, integration and test phase that took place between October 2016 and September 2017. Further, insight into the preparation procedures for the Antarctic mission is given, which led to the final mission preparation and transport logistics of the test facility. In December 2017, the analogue mission officially started with the on-site installation of the facility at Neumayer Station III. The paper gives an overview of the on-site build-up phase and the activities involved in putting the facility into its nominal operations mode. The paper concludes with a lessons learned and off-nominal issue section, gathered during the first months of operation in Antarctica.Item Status of the EDEN ISS Rack-like food production unit after five months in Antarctica(48th International Conference on Environmental Systems, 2018-07-08) Boscheri, Giorgio; Volponi, Marco; Zabel, Paul; Marchitelli, GiovanniPlant cultivation in large-scale closed environments is challenging and several key technologies necessary for space-based plant production are not yet space-qualified or remain in early stages of development. The Horizon2020 EDEN ISS project aims at development and demonstration of higher plant cultivation technologies, suitable for near term deployment on the International Space Station (ISS) and from a long-term perspective, within Moon and Mars habitats. The EDEN ISS consortium, as part of the performed activities, has designed and built a plant cultivation system to have form, fit and function of an European Drawer Rack 2 (EDR II) payload, with a modularity that would allow its incremental installation in the ISS homonymous rack, occupying from one-quarter rack to the full system. The developed system has been completed and tested in a laboratory environment in early 2017. The system was then integrated and tested at DLR Bremen into the main transport container (MTF). In the last 5 months the system was operated also in the highly-isolated German Antarctic Neumayer Station III, in the container-sized test facility to provide realistic mass flow relationships and interaction with a crewed environment. This paper describes the key results of the Bremen test phase as well as initial ISPR plant growth facility tests in Antarctica as space-analogue environment.Item Summary and Evaluation of the EDEN ISS Public Outreach Activities(2020 International Conference on Environmental Systems, 2020-07-31) Zabel, Paul; Zeidler, Conrad; Vrakking, Vincent; Schubert, Daniel; Imhof, Barbara; Hogle, MollySatellites are not the only platform providing scientists and engineers with access to space. High altitude balloons offer an attractive alternative that, in most cases, can accomplish the same mission objectives at a considerably lower price and risk. As such platforms are exposed to thermal environmental conditions very similar to the ones found in Low Earth Orbits, thermal analysis is done using the same software. Nevertheless, even though such software has a proven versatility and robustness, the configuration of the gondola-balloon system includes most of the conditions that affect negatively the accuracy in the Monte Carlo radiative calculations. As a result, several trade-offs, including the balloon’s GMM shape definition, the surfaces mesh and the number of rays fired in the radiative calculations, are required in order to ensure uncertainty levels are maintained below the defined thresholds. This document aims at explaining the difficulties found when calculating the radiative network of a high altitude balloon using Monte Carlo Ray Tracing algorithm, as well as providing a methodology to overcome them and to check the uncertainty of the results.Item Summary of Research and Outreach Activities during the 2021 Season of the EDEN ISS Antarctic Greenhouse(51st International Conference on Environmental Systems, 7/10/2022) Vrakking, Vincent; Zabel, Paul; Dorn, Markus; Schubert, Daniel; Bunchek, JessThe EDEN ISS greenhouse is a space-analogue test facility near the German Neumayer Station III in Antarctica. The greenhouse design, construction, and test phase began in 2015, and the facility was deployed in January 2018. From 2018 until early 2022, the greenhouse was in continuous operation during every winter-over period, with the 2021 season being the latest to be completed. The purpose of the facility is to enable multidisciplinary research on topics related to plant cultivation on future human space exploration missions. Research on food quality and safety, plant health monitoring, microbiology, system validation, human factors, horticultural sciences, and resource demand was conducted. During the 2021 season, research and operation of the EDEN ISS greenhouse was done as part of a DLR-NASA collaboration with an American on-site operator. Part of this collaboration was testing new crops like chili pepper, broccoli, cauliflower, and beans, which had never been grown inside EDEN ISS. These crops were complemented by a variety of lettuces, mustard greens, herbs, tomatoes, cucumbers, radishes, and kohlrabi. In total, approximately 300 kg of fresh produce was harvested during the 2021 season. Frozen and dried plant subsamples were collected and transferred back to Europe and the United States for further investigation. Additional samples were taken from the nutrient delivery subsystem and from surfaces inside the EDEN ISS facility in order to continue the microbiological research activities from previous years. Another research focus was capturing crew time for all activities inside the MTF and select support activities inside NM-III to increase the understanding of work time demand for future food production systems in space. DLR and NASA also continued the numerous outreach activities of the past years. This paper summarizes both the research and the outreach activities during the latest operational season of the EDEN ISS Antarctic greenhouse in 2021.