Analog Ideas, Tips & Guides

Header image: Amid an otherworldly landscape outside of Hanksville, Utah, sits the Mars Desert Research Station. Facilities like these are intended to mimic how people might fare on Mars or the Moon, or on long-term orbital stations. Visual: The Mars Society

Ashley Dove-Jay, University of Bristol

Get ready for launch, it’s time for the latest edition of Gardeners off World!

Header image: Suited up to simulate the conditions of working outside on Mars. Jonathan Clarke (the author, left) with visiting engineer Michael Curtis-Rouse, from UK Space Agency (right). Jonathan Clarke personal collection, Author provided.

This week, Gardeners Off World watched as the latest SpaceX launch (CRS-19) delivered more exciting experiments to the International Space Station (ISS).

In Jade Pearls and Alien Eyeballs I talk about the journeys plants have made with us – crisscrossing the globe and leaving Earth entirely for missions in space.

Join Emma the Space Gardener as she explores gardening on Earth… and beyond! In this episode, Emma recaps important spacecraft Arrivals and Departures and learns about growing nutrients and medicines in space. There’s a new plant experiment running on the International Space Station, and exciting news from ESA.

Hello! Welcome to Gardeners off World. The big news for space gardeners this week is that NASA has determined that the salads grown in Veggie are safe to eat. And a team of Russian researchers have developed a prototype for an orbital greenhouse. The Orbital Biological Automatic Module includes smart lighting to accelerate plant growth, specialised hydroponics, automated irrigation and harvesting solutions. It could be heading to the International Space Station (ISS) – “Humanity’s home in Low Earth Orbit” – in the next few years.

Barbara Cavalazzi, Università di Bologna

Hello! Welcome to Gardeners Off World. This week we’ll start with a musical interlude, as violinist Lindsey Stirling recently performed her song, Artemis, on top of the Launch Control Center at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center:

This is one of a series of posts looking at what we might eat on Mars, where most food would have to be shelf-stable, tinned or freeze-dried. You can find other posts on this topic under the Martian Meals tag.

Header image: Ella and Nicki at the Mars Desert Research Station. Provided by the author.

In the Hi-Seas habitat in Hawaii, analog astronauts take part in simulated space missions. Ben Greaves joins Emma the Space Gardener to talk about the isolation, the dehydrated diet, and his experiment growing microgreens in space-age hydrogel.

Hello, and welcome to Gardeners Off World, your round-up of interplanetary news and views. NASA’s Christina Koch returned to Earth yesterday, after spending 328 days onboard the International Space Station (ISS) – the longest single spaceflight by a woman. Koch participated in three expeditions – 59, 60 and 61 – during her first spaceflight. ESA’s Luca Parmitano and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Skvortsov came home on the same flight.

Hello, and welcome to Gardeners off World! On 15 February, the NG-13 cargo ship blasted off from NASA Wallops on its way to the International Space Station (ISS). It arrived on 18 February, where NASA astronaut Drew Morgan caught it with the Canadarm2 robotic arm.

Hello, and welcome to Gardeners Off World, a weekly round-up of news and entertainment for people who rather fancy getting their hands dirty on another planet!

Last weekend, as the temperatures soared, I found a certain amount of solace in learning more about how plants are being grown in Antarctica – the coldest place on Earth. 

Join Emma the Space Gardener as she explores gardening on Earth… and beyond! In this episode, Emma talks to analog astronaut Elliot Roth, who recently spent two weeks in a simulated Moon mission. Find out why Elliot thinks we should pack algae when we leave Earth, and why we’d be better settling on Venus than Mars.

Header image: Anastasiya (left) and myself working on the Haughton crater rim. Mars Society, Author provided.

A standard mission to the International Space Station is six months long. About nine months before launch, each astronaut tastes the 200 or so items on NASA’s space menu and chooses what they want to be sent into space for them. Nutritionists weigh in to make sure they get the nutrients they need, and astronauts can take some ‘bonus’ treats with them. These can be off-the-shelf foods, and astronauts from different nationalities often have special space meals prepared for them. (Tim Peake got a bacon sandwich, beef stew with truffles and sausages and mash, courtesy of Heston Blumenthal.)

Welcome to Gardeners Off World, your weekly round-up of all that’s fresh in space gardening. 

Matt Damon as astronaut and exobotanist Mark Watney in the film The Martian grows crops on Mars. (20th Century Fox/Handout)

Another week in Lockdown, and another edition of Gardeners off World. We’re all now supposed to feel like astronauts, cooped up inside a small space with the same companions for weeks at a time. The barrage of isolation advice articles from astronauts, analog astronauts and Antarctic scientists continues. If you’re not bored of them yet, Space Nation has thoughts from Jane Poynter, who spent two years locked inside Biosphere 2 and Smithsonian magazine has spoken to people from all three groups of career isolators. I prefer Marina Koren’s article in The Atlantic, which explains why advice from astronauts may not be enough to help us survive a pandemic.

It’s time for Gardeners off World, the only publication aimed at would-be interplanetary gardeners – or as I like to call it, A Giant Leap for Growkind

Header image: A researcher in a spacesuit on “Mars” outside the Mars Society Desert Research Station in Utah. David Howells/Corbis Historical via Getty Images

One of the things I enjoy about investigating space travel is seeing the ways in which it highlights and integrates cultural differences. This is, perhaps, most obvious in the special meals that astronauts of different nationalities take with them, and share with their crewmates. The most recent example of this is the UAE’s first astronaut – Hazzaa Ali Almansoori – who has just returned from an eight-day visit to the International Space Station.

ESA’s ESTEC (European Space Research and Technology Centre) held their annual open day over the weekend. One of the projects on display was part of the MELiSSA (Micro-Ecological Life Support System Alternative) project, which is investigating ways to use microbiological cells, chemicals, catalysts, algae, bacteria and plants to process waste and deliver continuous supplies of oxygen, water and food.

Allyson Brady, McMaster University

A few years ago, a pair of New York artists Heidi Neilson and Douglas Paulson started a fun project called “Menu for Mars“, aiming to figure out what astronauts might eat on Mars. Every month for a year, the Menu for Mars Supper Club met at a New York restaurant, “gathering recommendations, suggestions and opinions from restaurateurs about what food they would prepare on Mars”. During these research missions, the group hosted a wide range of experts and learned about related topics such as horticulture and composting, nutrition and culinary anthropology. Mission 3, the Meal Replacement Picnic, was particularly gruelling. They sampled an array of meal replacement products and found most of them to be barely edible (and certainly not a replacement for a genuine meal). Afterwards, they had to send someone to get emergency sandwiches.

Title image: Csilla Ari D`Agostino and her teammate carry out experiments outside their undersea habitat. [Image credit: NASA]

As we’re all stuck at home for the moment, I thought it would be nice to take some virtual tours of lovely places. For today’s visit, we’re doing something a little bit different and taking a trip in our time machine. We’re going back to May 2007, when garden designer Sarah Eberle won a gold medal at RHS Chelsea for “600 Days with Bradstone”.

Welcome to my new weekly round-up of the most exciting interplanetary gardening news!

Header image: George Frey/EPA

Lori Waters from Magnitude.io joins Emma the Space Gardener to talk about the Exolab experiments that have sent intrepid leguminauts into space, the student researchers involved in the ground control experiments, and her experiences as an analog astronaut.

A striking, gold inflatable house designed to “withstand life on Mars” has landed in Bristol. Its lightweight design can withstand the environmental challenges life on Mars would bring, and is powered by solar panels.

Emma the Space Gardener is back with a round-up of recent space gardening news. Exciting stuff has been happening on the ISS, where green-fingered space gardener Mike Hopkins has been pricking out seedlings and harvesting crops from Veggie.