Astronauts on future long-duration spaceflight missions to the Moon and Mars could rely on microalgae to supply essentials including food, water and oxygen. A new investigation aboard the International Space Station tests using the microalgae Chlorella vulgaris as a biological component of a hybrid life support system (LSS).
As humans travel farther from Earth and for longer periods of time, bringing along sufficient supplies of food, water and oxygen becomes a challenge. Packing food that is nutritious and perhaps even tasty may prove harder still.
Current life support systems, such as the Life Support Rack (LSR), use physicochemical processes and chemical reactions to generate oxygen and water and remove carbon dioxide from the space station.
The Photobioreactor (PBR) investigation demonstrates creating a hybrid LSS by adding the biological processes of a microalgae, which has a photosynthetic efficiency up to ten times greater than more complex plants. These tiny plants could take concentrated carbon dioxide removed from the cabin atmosphere and use photosynthesis to produce oxygen and possibly even food for astronauts, according to Norbert Henn, a co-investigator and consultant at the Institute of Space Systems at University of Stuttgart.
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