Nope, I'm not kidding. There are tomatoes growing at the South Pole as we speak, surrounded by thousands of miles of ice. Could they also grow on the moon? Scientists are studying the South Pole greenhouse to find out. Here is my latest post on the Earth Gauge in Antarctica blog:
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Broadcast meteorologist Dan Satterfield tours the greenhouse. Photo courtesy of Satterfield.
South Pole Greenhouse Feeds Winter Crew, Simulates Lunar Chamber
At the bottom of the Earth, atop a land mass covered with a two mile-thick slab of ice, sits the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station where 40 to 60 people live and work during each long, dark, bitter-cold winter. On the first floor of the station, near the end of hallway is a small greenhouse. Since 2005, this remotely-operated chamber has provided countless fresh vegetables, light and humidity to over 200 winter-over staff and scientists who have spent Southern Hemisphere winters at the coldest, darkest place on Earth. The growth chamber will feed crew members again this winter.
Lane Patterson manages the South Pole greenhouse from his office at the University of Arizona, with help from a team of horticulturalists and engineers. “Through a computer and camera, I’m able to access the chamber and assist with questions that the operator might have,” he said. The chamber grows edible plants in a soil-less hydroponics system of nutrient-rich water; cantaloupe, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, chives fresh herbs, leafy green vegetables like kale and lettuce, sunflowers, nasturtiums and other edibles thrive here throughout the year. Patterson can control the conditions inside the chamber, including temperature, light and even the hydroponic solution in which the plants grow. He communicates remotely with an assistant who maintains the greenhouse in-person at the Pole, and visits once every year or so to check on it.
The chamber provides other benefits besides nutritious vegetables. “It provides us with bright light in the dark winter. It provides us with high humidity in the dry environment. It provides us with a green environment — something that we miss for the eight months of being isolated as a researcher or someone who supports a researcher here at the South Pole.”
Staff also enjoy going into the chamber to read, relax or hang out with others. Some even reserve the room for dinner dates (there is a small table and couch in the foyer to the chamber). A humid environment, even if in a small chamber, is a welcome relief for chapped lips and dry skin. Relative humidity at the South Pole is in the single digits; in the chamber, it’s 60 percent. In addition, each staff member is allowed only two showers per week, each two minutes long. The Station’s water supply is low and conservation is important: using water requires ice to be melted. But, the benefit of using water for plant growth outweigh the use of energy to melt it.
“The growth chamber is really a big ‘growbot’ — it’s a robot that grow things,” said Patterson. It requires about 140 liters of water, sequesters about one kilogram of carbon dioxide and uses about 281 kilowatt hours of energy (equivalent to eight gallons of gasoline) per day. In turn, it produces about half a kilogram of oxygen and six kilograms of biomass (raw plant matter) each day.
The South Pole greenhouse is similar to another of Patterson’s projects at the University of Arizona’s Controlled Environment Agriculture Center: the lunar greenhouse. The South Pole project analyzes air revitalization in a remote environment that could help future greenhouse projects in space. “We’re looking at using plants to revitalize the air that a person breathes. We’re asking the questions: How many plants do you need? How much photosynthesis do you have to have? What are the resources that are needed to cycle the amount of oxygen a person breathes daily? … How it relates to the South Pole is that a Bioregenerative Life Support System on the moon, say, would be a place that if it used BLSS, it would be isolated, it would be a station with a small crew in a very dangerous environment. And that’s what the South Pole is,” Patterson said.
To learn more about the project and view photos, visit http://ag.arizona.edu/CEAC.
