It’s little wonder that so much of the early research into space exploration would orbit around escaping gravity’s grip, or that the source of that escape, the rocket, would occupy so many minds with the cosmic ambition to match their intellect.
But that ambition fueled the race to space at least as much as liquid hydrogen did. And so, as Nebraska U’s Yufeng Ge and Santosh Pitla witnessed the astronomical advances of their own era — reusable rockets landing back on Earth, a drone taking flight on Mars — the Husker engineers began thinking big about an aspect of space travel just obvious enough to often escape attention.
“We’ll be on Mars and the moon, we’ll have settlements — and people got to eat,” said Pitla, associate professor of biological systems engineering.
Before long, the duo was applying for and earning a two-year Grand Challenges grant from Nebraska’s Office of Research and Economic Development. Ge and Pitla’s long-term goal is about as grand as it gets: finding ways to sustainably grow food on space stations, the moon, Mars and other celestial bodies that might eventually sustain legions of human ones. To do it, they formed the Consortium of Space, Policy, Agriculture, Climate and Extreme Environment — SPACE2, for short.
The consortium’s short-term aim doesn’t exactly lean modest, either. It may not rank with the near-vacuum of space, but Ge and Pitla would come to learn of a sizable void: No U.S. university features a center dedicated specifically to the study of space agriculture. The researchers want Nebraska to house the first.
“If NASA or the big space companies — SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin — want to go out and work with a university, who would that be?” Pitla said. “We have been doing ag research for more than 100 years, and we’re an ag state.
“Why reinvent the wheel somewhere else when we already have all this experience?”
It helps, Ge said, that Nebraska U “sits very, very nicely in that intersection” of multidisciplinary expertise and force-multiplier collaboration that the rigors and relentlessness of space will demand. The university-housed Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute, the recent recipient of a $19 million grant to pursue sustainable irrigation and mechanization in developing countries, has long endeavored to grow more food with less water. Ge’s own research into ag-relevant sensors is likewise informing more precise, efficient application of fertilizer and water, both of which will prove even more precious in space than on Earth. Pitla has spearheaded the engineering and testing of Flex-Ro, an autonomous planter that can already seed a 5-acre, untilled field on its own.
Source: eurekalert.org
Photo Credit: gettyimages-nicexray
Categories: Nebraska, Crops