UF to explore biotechnology space research with NASA grant

May 23, 2002

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Scientists and science-fiction writers alike know that if people are ever to spend years on distant space stations or colonize other planets, they’ll have to re-create miniaturized versions of the Earth’s ecosystem in conditions utterly hostile to life.

To probe this mammoth challenge, NASA has awarded the University of Florida a $4.75 million grant. The project’s overall goal: develop new technologies to help grow plants, recycle waste and create breathable air in an artificial ecosystem that is far smaller and more contained than the one on Earth – yet just as resilient.

“Basically, we’re going to be developing biotechnology solutions to support NASA’s future human missions in space and on other planets,” said Peggy Evanich, UF director of space research programs.

Because of the expense and difficulty of transporting fuel, food and oxygen into outer space, scientists believe any mission cut off from Earth for longer than 18 months must rely on “bioregenerative life support,” said Rob Ferl, a UF professor of horticultural sciences and the lead scientist on the project’s plant growth component.

This means scientists must develop the technology for people to be entirely self-sustaining before NASA’s planned mission to Mars, which is expected to last three years, and other more ambitious stays in outer space, said Bill Knott, senior scientist at Kennedy Space Center’s biological sciences office.

“The way we do it now is basically like a picnic – we take everything with us and we bring all the trash back,” Knott said. “Regenerative life support is when we get away from the picnic concept and really go to something that allows us to live in space permanently.”

However, the challenges to creating an Earth-like life-support system in space are huge. Naturally adapted to Earth’s conditions, plants do not grow well in space. While the decay-regeneration cycle of organic matter works seamlessly here, reproducing it in a small, enclosed space station or colony is a complex engineering problem. Ditto for the natural carbon dioxide-oxygen symbiosis between animals and plants.

The grant is divided into two parts to address these challenges: human support and plant growth. A third component will seek potential commercial partners and applications for new technologies developed during the research, Evanich said.

Mark Law, a UF electrical and computer engineering professor, heads the human-support portion of the grant. He said engineers are planning four projects aimed at improving water reclamation technologies and creating ultra-small sensors to monitor the reclamation system for potentially unhealthy pollutants or pathogens.

“If you’re on a long-duration space station, you have to reclaim your water, and one of tasks is to build a test bed or prototype lab to test our sensors and other technologies that will help us do that,” Law said.

Ferl said his main goal will be to genetically engineer oxygen-producing plants in an effort to overcome their resistance to growing in the zero-gravity, low-pressure, low-light conditions of outer space. That’s necessary because the science-fiction solution of bubble-like space greenhouses is probably impossible to re-create in real life, he said. The differences in pressure between outer space and living space are just too great, he said.

“We need to learn how to grow plants in a totally new environment,” Ferl said. “We have to learn to engineer plants to live at pressures that you and I can’t live at.”

The grant’s commercialization component will seek to identify companies that may be willing to help fund the technologies as they are being developed for Earth-based commercial applications, said Bill Sheehan, UF director of the engineering college’s Environmental Systems Commercial Space Technology Center.

Win Phillips, UF vice president for research and dean of the graduate school, said the grant will help UF support Gov. Jeb Bush’s goal of making Florida the number one state not only for spacecraft launches, but also for space research and technology transfer.

“We have the top launch facility at Kennedy Space Center, and our space research and commercialization efforts are rapidly expanding,” Phillips said.