After living in a closed simulated martial environment for a year, four National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) astronauts returned back to normal life early this month. The news generated lot of curiosity.

It’s an ambitious program that NASA has undertaken to understand how its astronauts can survive in a challenging environment. What caught my attention was that, in their twelve month mission was the fact that the crew used a unit similar to a vertical farm home unit to grow their food.

https://www.nextgov.com/emerging-tech/2024/07/nasas-astronauts-return-after-year-living-simulated-mars/397966/

source: NASA

In my quest to know about feasibility of such a model, I researched a bit about it and came to know about a Los Angeles based startup called Interstellar Lab. The company develops bio-farming platforms combining AI, advance hardware, and bioscience to supply plant based ingredients on earth and in space.

https://interstellarlab.com/

According to the company website, it has designed a controlled-environment capsule system that could one day allow crops to be grown in space. Its Nutritional Closed-Loop Eco-Unit System, or “NUCLEUS,” is a modular structure composed of nine cube capsules designed to provide a nutritious diet for four astronauts for the duration of a two-year mission.it is capable of producing fresh microgreens, vegetables, mushrooms, and even edible insects. 

“Inside the NUCLEUS capsule cubes, plants are grown in vertical crop systems, the method many scientists consider to be the best option for Martian agriculture.”

Vertical farming is a method of growing crops without soil in a controlled environment, delivering nutrient-rich water straight to a plant’s roots.

According to a CNN report, Deane Falcone, Crop One’s chief scientific officer informed, “if a vertical farm were to be used on Mars, water could be extracted from ice sheets below the planet’s surface, while light could be supplied either by a system of mirrors to magnify the natural sunlight or using lamps powered by solar and wind energy.” 

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/03/24/world/mars-food-interstellar-lab-climate-scn-spc-intl/index.html

There are lot of other companies that are experimenting with vertical hydroponic farming. A few of them are Urban Agri Farms, Plenty Farms, Farm One, Aero Farms, Freight Farms. The future of vertical farms is bright and it is sustainable farming.