featur
growing food in space
As humans look to colonize distant planets
in our solar system and beyond, work has
started to figure out a way to feed those
willing to make the trip both during
their travels and once settled. Lee
Allen takes us closer to one
program experimenting with
controlled-environment
growing for space travel.
42
feature
Story and Photos
by Lee Allen
A
ccording to Universe Today, depending
on orbital rotation, the average distance
between Earth and Mars is approximately
140 million miles. Even traveling at well
over 35,000 miles per hour, such a trip could
take up to eight months. Hence the need
for the Mars-Lunar Greenhouse project
at the University of Arizona’s Controlled
Environment Agriculture Center in Tucson,
a fully functional prototype greenhouse
that has been growing crops for
years under the auspices of
a NASA Steckler Space
Grant collaboration.