“ Antarctica is not the most probable place to find fresh ingredients for a salad .
But German scientists have just collected — and wipe out — their first quite a little of lettuce , cucumbers and radish from a unexampled greenhouse on the frozen continent .
“ It tasted as if we had harvest it impudent from the garden , ” Bernhard Gropp , the managing director of the Neumayer Station III , a German research readiness in Antarctica , said in a statement .
The shipping container - sizing greenhouse , call in EDEN ISS , was installed in February about a stern - mi ( 400 meters ) from the inquiry place , which is located on the Ekström Ice Shelf . The intellectual nourishment - growing lab is providing welcome fresh veg for Gropp and his other marooned colleagues during long missions in Antarctica . But EDEN ISS has a loftier mission ; the facility is an experimentation go by the German Aerospace Center ( DLR ) designed to try the salutary methods for cultivating crops for astronaut .
Space - mature industrial plant could help sustain crew on long missions inside the International Space Station ( ISS ) , or at farther destinations like the lunation or Mars , where deliveries of fresh food would be less hard-nosed .
With such a hostile surroundings outside , the Antarctic greenhouse indeed has conditions like those of a spacecraft : It has no filth and no raw sunlight , and it has to go as a totally closed system , with its water dispersion , purplish artificial lighting and C dioxide levels tightly hold in .
Many of the organization can be managed remotely from Europe . But DLR scientist Paul Zabel is in Antarctica with the greenhouse , expend about 3 to 4 hour each mean solar day take care of the industrial plant . Zabel has so far gather 8 lbs . ( 3.6 kilograms ) of lettuce , 70 Raphanus sativus and 18 cucumbers in the first harvest , according to the DLR ’s promulgation yesterday ( April 5 ) . ”
I wonderhow much this salad cost ?
The far you get towards the pole , the harder it is to grow crop . finally , you are stuck eating whales , SEAL , fish and penguin . Unless you have a zillion dollars for a glasshouse , that is . It would be awesome to see this research translate over to a Mars al-Qaida finally .
I hope the US does n’t set out WWIII in Syria and ruin our chances for another 100 .
- image at top credit DLR
