NASA is demonstrating new microgravity fluid technology to enable advanced “mobile parts-free” plant water methods on spacecraft.
Microgravity crop production is crucial to providing whole food nutrition, dietary diversity and psychological benefits to astronauts exploring deep space. Unfortunately, even the easiest way to water a land plant in a microlayer environment can pose a huge challenge on the spacecraft due to rogue bubbles, ingested gas, discharged droplets, and numerous unstable liquid jets, rivets and interface configurations.
In weightlessness in space, bubbles do not rise and droplets do not fall, resulting in many unusual fluid flow challenges. To address such complex dynamics, NASA launched a series of plant water management (PWM) experiments to test capillary water source technology on the International Space Station in 2021. A series of experiments continued until this day, not only open to Astronauts in our space, but also support our space with fresh vegetables, and solve space challenges, such as fuel-rich challenges such as numerous fuels, and heated numerous fuels, and heated numerous fuels, as we all know, numerous, numerous, numerous, numerous, numerous, numerous, numerous vegetables (within the range), well known (within many), spanning numerous vegetables. Even urine collection.
The latest PWM hardware (PWM-5 and -6) involves three test units, each including a variable speed pump, a tube strap harness, various valves and syringes, and a serial or two parallel hydroponic channels. This latest setup makes it possible to test a wider range of parameters - EG, gas and liquid flow, fill levels, inlet/exit/exit configurations, new bubble separation methods, serial and parallel flows, and new plant root types, numbers and orders.
Most PWM equipment delivered to the space station consists of 3D printed flight certification materials. The crew assembled various system configurations on the workbench of the station's open cabin and then performed experiments, including routine communication with the PWM research team on the ground. All quantitative data are collected by a single HD camera.
The PWM hardware and processes are designed to test the system's hydrology and ebb and flow functions step by step, and repeatedly demonstrate start-up, drainage, serial/parallel channel operation, passive foam management, operational limitation, stability, disturbance, start-up, shut-off, close, close, clean factory saturation, as well as Merriact Clean Plastion, Merriact Clean, Merriact and Atate-Atate, stable, stable flow, and stable flow, as well as stable steps.
The latest results of technology demonstrations on the PWM -5 and -6 on the space station significantly drive technology for watering passive plants and plants in space. These quantitative demonstrations establish hydroponics and tidal elevation and flow processes as functions as serial and parallel channel filling levels, various types of engineered plant root models, and pump flow rates – including single-phase liquid flow and gas-liquid two-phase flow.
Critical PWM pipeline elements play the role of passive gas separation (i.e., eliminating bubbles in liquids and vice versa), which usually occurs on Earth due to gravitational effects. PWM -5 and -6 hardware actually replaces the passive action of gravity with the passive action of surface tension, wetting and system geometry. This allows highly reliable "unmotivated" pipeline equipment to restore the fantasy feeling in space. For example,
Despite the challenging wetting properties using aqueous nutrient solutions, the performance of PWM-5 and -6 provides a variety of ready-made plug-in solutions for PWM-5 and -6, which can effectively water plants in low and variable gravity environments. Although PWM -5 and -6 demonstrate various root models, the rest is unknown to the role of actual growing plants in such systems. It may only be a matter of time before such knowledge is acquired.
Project leader: Dr. Mark Weislogel, IRPI LLC
Sponsored Organization: Department of Biology Science