Collaboration is the name of the game for one of NASA's latest endeavors. Under the banner of the X-Hab Academic Innovation Challenge, the agency recently selected several universities, each a leader in their field of research, to develop “systems, concepts and technologies that will help expand NASA's space exploration abilities.” Having research projects like these are a boon to students in engineering and the sciences, providing a range of great educational and experience-building opportunities.
The research projects these institutions will be pursuing can be grouped into three main categories: developing deep space materials, architecture for long-term space habitation, and food production/recycling.
For instance, the University of Connecticut and University of Maryland will focus on finding ways to use 3D printing to extend the use of limited resources during space exploration.
The University of Connecticut in particular is working to answer the question of what happens when you're in space and something breaks. You could bring a bunch of replacements as cargo, but the need to minimize weight in spacecraft makes this a less viable option for long-term space travel.
This is where teams like those at the University of Connecticut's Pratt & Whitney Additive Manufacturing Innovation Center come in. An innovator in 3D printing, both the Center and NASA believe that a more viable solution to the “broken in space” problem is to simply take the components from a broken piece of equipment and 3D-print a new one.
Given the possibility of missions that will be measured in years rather than months, having the ability to create your own replacement parts is an invaluable tool.
Of course, the easiest way to deal with broken items is to build them so that they won't break in the first place. That is the focus of the University of Maryland’s efforts, as they make use of 3D printing techniques to develop low-friction alternatives to existing spacesuit materials.
Despite the fact that these materials operate in the vacuum of space, over potentially millions of repetitions of body movements, even a slight decrease in the amount of wear and tear placed on spacesuit materials will pay dividends in the long run.
Another obstacle that NASA faces with the prospect of long-term space travel is the creation of living spaces for the men and women on board. This means creating a habitation area that won't drive them stir-crazy, while also not interfering with their ability to perform research work.
The Pratt Institute of New York will be tackling the former goal through a collaborative effort between their Architecture and Industrial Design Schools, building a full space model of their deep space habitat.
Artist’s rendition of the Pratt Institute’s Mars Ice House habitat. (Image courtesy of NASA.)
Luckily, this particular team has built exoplanetary living spaces before: in 2015, they designed and created the Mars Ice House, a space for living on Mars’ surface that used 3D printed ice as its primary building material.
Their design takes advantage of water's inherent ability to filter UV rays in order to combat the radiation that space explorers would be exposed to thanks to Mars’ almost non-existent atmosphere. Clearly, ambition is not something that the minds at the Pratt Institute are lacking.
Elaborating on the issue of deep space habitation will be Oklahoma State University, which will be exploring the effects of vertical versus horizontal habitat designs. It seems like an arbitrary question of which would be ideal. However, given that “up” and “down” are relative concepts while travelling through space (if they exist at all for those on board), discovering whether certain orientations will facilitate or denigrate the well-being of crew members is important.
However, even the most comfortable journey will come to an abrupt and unpleasant halt without food. In much the same way that making a quick trip back to Earth for a replacement part isn't an option, engineers will need to find ways to continually produce fresh food and water when the nearest produce aisle is millions of kilometres away.
The Ohio State University’s passive water delivery system. (Image courtesy of the Ohio State University.)
To that end, Ohio State University and the University of Michigan will be exploring new technologies for making the most of the limited organic material at the disposal of Mars-bound space crews.
For Ohio State, the project at hand is to find more efficient means to deliver life-giving water to plants in on-board gardens, and eliminating air bubbles in the delivery system (thereby maximizing the volume of H2O that can be delivered per square unit of the system), while still allowing a sufficient amount of oxygen at the root level.
At the same time, the team will be ensuring that those same plants continue to prove useful well after they've gone to the great greenhouse in the sky, by working towards a way to convert plant waste biomass into nutritious mulch for the next generation of salad-to-be.
In conjunction with this, Michigan will be solving the conundrum of where the water for all these plants is going to come from. Water is heavy, so having a separate dedicated supply for both human consumption and plant sustenance isn't in the cards if NASA wants a lean, mean launch shuttle.
Members of the University of Michigan BLiSS team, who are focusing on developing a system to convert human urine into a plant nutrient solution. (Image courtesy of the University of Michigan.)
The team going by the name BLiSS (Bio-regenerative Life Support Systems Project) has a different tactic: converting urine into a plant nutrient solution. After all, we humans drop so much water on a daily basis. Why not get some use out of it?
It'll be exciting to see what different solutions these universities come up with, and you can keep up with the latest developments at any of the participating universities' websites, or by heading over to NASA and searching for the X-Hab project.