LED Lighting to Cultivate Fruit and Veges in Space

Thought you’d be eating vacuum packed meals in space? Think again. Fruit and veges could now be part of everyday space cuisine as part of EDEN’s (Evolution and Design of Environmentally-Closed Nutrition Sources) latest research initiative to grow fruit and veges in outer space with LED lights.

The German Aerospace Centre (DRL) has picked up new Heliospectra LED lighting technology which the company has developed to help researchers explore conditions that can be used to grow fruit and veges in outer space. These space greenhouses could potentially function and feed a crew millions of miles above the clouds and prove particularly useful in harsh environments like a greenhouse module on Mars, or on slightly closer turf at the Neumayer Station III in Antarctica.

One of the current projects at the German institute investigates testing the greenhouse module in the hostile Antarctica environment where a team lives in total isolation for nine months straight. Researchers hope to discover the ways whereby food could be produced for the crew and investigate how plants influence humans in isolation.

[via inhabitat]