03/09/2015
Travelling to Mars Is In Progress Near the Barcelona Synchrotron Park
Travelling to Mars Is In Progress Near the Barcelona Synchrotron Park
Recently, an original experiment carried out on the International Space Station was exposed by the media: astronauts tested in August the first vegetable ever cultivated into space (a salad) as part of a NASA experiment to help prolong manned missions.
Some hundred meters horizontally far from the Barcelona Synchrotron Park (BSP) - and not 400 km above it -, the MELiSSA pilot plant from the European Space Agency (ESA), which is located in the engineering school of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), the BSP strategic partner, works on a similar but much more ambitious project.
During a round-trip voyage to Mars, a six-person crew would need about 30 tons of food, oxygen and water for the 1,000 days mission. This huge quantity would be drastically reduced if a closed loop system would recycle the CO2 exhaled and the waste produced by the crew in order to produce in return oxygen, water and food, etc.: this is the MELiSSA project.
This project started 20 years ago and is founded up to 60% by the ESA (5 million Euros per year). It involves 100 researchers from 30 organizations and 15 European countries. In this puzzle the UAB pilot plant, which was inaugurated in 2009, plays a central role and will soon take a new important step: living beings will be introduced in the plant in order to test some parts of the artificial ecosystem. Rats, not astronauts, at the moment.
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Engineering_Technology/Melissa
Some hundred meters horizontally far from the Barcelona Synchrotron Park (BSP) - and not 400 km above it -, the MELiSSA pilot plant from the European Space Agency (ESA), which is located in the engineering school of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), the BSP strategic partner, works on a similar but much more ambitious project.
During a round-trip voyage to Mars, a six-person crew would need about 30 tons of food, oxygen and water for the 1,000 days mission. This huge quantity would be drastically reduced if a closed loop system would recycle the CO2 exhaled and the waste produced by the crew in order to produce in return oxygen, water and food, etc.: this is the MELiSSA project.
This project started 20 years ago and is founded up to 60% by the ESA (5 million Euros per year). It involves 100 researchers from 30 organizations and 15 European countries. In this puzzle the UAB pilot plant, which was inaugurated in 2009, plays a central role and will soon take a new important step: living beings will be introduced in the plant in order to test some parts of the artificial ecosystem. Rats, not astronauts, at the moment.
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Engineering_Technology/Melissa
More news
02/06/2021
Parc de l’Alba in a WHO publication on the redevelopment of contaminated sites
27/04/2021
Natura Bissé: when architecture reflects the brand identity
08/04/2021
ASTIP, the future hub for advanced research in the Barcelona Synchrotron Park
25/03/2021
4th anniversary of the setting up of Stradivarius headquarter in the Barcelona Synchrotron Park
05/03/2021
T-Systems, a leading IT service provider with a Data Centre in the Barcelona Synchrotron Park
18/02/2021
SENER participates in the Perseverance rover which is landing on Mars today
home