The Remote Controls of Greenhouses as part of Bio-regenerative Life Support System for future Planetary Outposts: a challenging task to ensure the survivability of the crew ISLSWG Workshop on Bioregenerative Life Support. Turin, May 2015

2 Why a Space Greenhouse?

3 Present on ISS: Physical-Chemical ECLSS

4 Future: Greenhouse based ECLSS

5 A Space Greenhouse: Clear Pro’s Respect the classical physical-chemical ECLSS a space greenhouse could offer a real (quasi) closed loop environment with a huge reduction of external contribution (in terms of resources) to the whole life loop system

6 Planetary Greenhouses in Outposts The presence of men on planetary outpost requires the possibility to regenerate the needed resources via BLSS. In the BLSS a Greenhouse represents one of the key element of the environmental control chain. Any problem on the plant production is affecting the possibility to sustain the life of the crew and any failure into the system can result in a catastrophic event The control of a greenhouse represents therefore one of the most important challenging task, since it relies with the monitoring of a complex system

7 Space Greenhouse: a very complex system

8 An example of Complex Space System: Columbus Module

9 ISS Ground Segment MPLS

10 COL-CC –Is responsible of the COLUMBUS operations at system level and coordinates the real time payloads operations USOC –The implementation of ESA’s payload operations on the ISS is based on a decentralised concept, making use of the so called User Support and Operations Centres (USOC’s) Engineering Support Team –Support the operations preparations and conduction ESA/European Astronaut Center –Is responsible of the astronaut training, health and safety ESA/ESTEC –Is responsible of the program management Columbus Decentralised Approach of ESA

11 Columbus Operations: European Centers Astrium - Bremen, Germany Engineering Support Center ESA EAC – Koln, Germany Astronaut Training Center MUSC- Koln, Germany Biology USOC COL-CC- Munich, Germany Columbus Control Center ALTEC - Turin, Italy Engineering Support Center MARS Telespazio - Naples, Italy Fluid Science USOC CADMOS - Tolouse, France Human Physiology USOC E-USOC - Madrid, Spain Fluid Science USOC B-USOC – Bruxelles, Belgium Solar Physics USOC DAMEC - Copenhagen, Denmark Human Physiology USOC N-USOC - Trondheim, Norway Plant Biology USOC MCC-H – Houston, Texas (USA) Payload Control Center POIC - Huntsville, Alabama (USA) Payload Control Center Telecommands Telemetry Columbus Module Distributed Columbus Control Centers BIOTESC- Luzern, Switzerland Biology USOC

12 and if we apply the same concept to Space greenhouse

13 Space Greenhouse Remote Control: an analogy A greenhouse is obviously more complex to control and handle because it includes biological systems and therefore has more variables respect a classical ECLSS (which is based upon physic-chemical s/s) Respect a classical ECLSS a space greenhouse is more pending the human intervention rather than to be completely automatized through control laws and appropriate algorithms. For the above reason it is necessary to include ground entities in the control loop, to cover several disciplines: Food Scientist Agronomists Micro-biologist Nutritionists Engineers: Environmental control Nutrient Delivery System Illumination Robotic arms GreenHouse Control Center Engineers Agronomists Micro-Biologists Food Scientists Nutritionists

14 EDEN ISS: Ipothesis of Ground Network Centers UHB, DLR - Bremen, Germany System Control Center UHB, TAS-I - Turin, Italy ISPR Responsible Center USOC, Telespazio - Naples, Italy Engineering Support, Data Processing & Distribution Telecommands Telemetry EDEN ISS Greenhouse UHB, Wageningen, Nederlands Plants Monitoring Responsible UHB, Guelph University, Canada Monitoring Control System Off line Support Centers 1.AWI - Germany 2.Heliospectra - Sweden 3.Liquifer System Groups - Austria 4.Enginsoft - Italy 5.CNR - Italy 6.Limerick Institute of Technology- Ireland 7.Aerosekur - Italy 8.Airbus Space and Defense - Germany Neumayer III, Germany Antarctic Base

15 Example of a Small Greenhouse Telemetry and Commands Command Temperature Temperature setpoint Temperature Active Control (on/off) Thermal Cycle CO 2 CO 2 Valve opening/closure CO 2 setpoint CO2 Active Control (on/off) Illumination Blu/Red Leds (on/off) PAR Level Illumination Cycle (on/off) Telemetry Temperature Air Temperature Leaf temperature Temperature Active Control (on/off) Temperature Setpoint Thermal Cycle (Active/Not active) Umidity Air Umidity Soil Umidity CO 2 CO 2 Level CO 2 Valve Status (Open/Closed) CO 2 Level Active Control (On/Off) CO 2 Setpoint Illumination PAR Level PAR Setpoint Blu/Red Leds (on/off) Illumination Cycle (On/Off)

16 Remote Camera Management

17 Conclusions To cope with the complexity of an Orbital Space Greenhouse, a ground segment based on the decentralized concept of disciplinary centers cooperating on the control has been proposed It is expected that in the near future it will be possible to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed concept on small scale demonstrative development on ISS. It is possible that, for medium and long term project like Lunar of Mars Greenhouses, the expertise development and the advances we expect in electronics will allow the capture of the knowledge of the experts and its integration into the automatic s/s control loops However, ISS environment is completely different from the Lunar or MARS outposts and therefore the challenges we will have to encounter will force us to maintain the same “ground control by Experts” also for these greenhouses

18 Thank you!