As part of a new project, we will be looking at ways in which we can feed our astronauts on long-term space missions. A mission to Mars is expected to take 3 years, with 1-tonne of food required per year, per astronaut! With an 8 month trip required to send further provisions, space missions of the future will need to be self-sufficient. With many of the constraints of Earth-bound agricultural systems lacking is this our chance to rethink how we can grow our plants?
Joint with researchers including Professor Volker Hessel and Dr Matthew Knowling at the University of Adelaide and Professor Dov Stekel at the University of Nottingham we will be supervising a new PhD student starting in July 2021 to model closed-loop agricultural systems to simulate potential growing conditions in space.
