NASA scientists have come up with an inflatable greenhouse where astronauts can grow fresh food as well as produce oxygen.

Astronauts have successfully grown plants and vegetables aboard the International Space Station (ISS), but NASA  has gone a step further and designed an inflatable, deployable greenhouse to support plant and crop production for nutrition, air revitalisation, water recycling and waste recycling, which will help pioneers working in deep space.

As plants use up carbon dioxide to provide food and oxygen, Ray Wheeler, lead scientist at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida felt that the carbon dioxide exhaled by the astronauts can be introduced into the greenhouse, and the plants there can use it to generate oxygen through photosynthesis.

As far as the water cycle is concerned, water that is found at the lunar or Martian landing site is oxygenated, given nutrient salts, and it continuously flows across the root zone of the plants and returned to the storage system.

Tests are also being conducted at the Prototype Lunar Greenhouse at the University of Arizona in the US to determine what plants, seeds or other materials should be taken along to make the system work on the Moon or Mars. It is very important to learn what to take and what to gather for living on distant locations.

Sadler Machine Company, one of the project partners is developing the prototypes which are cylindrical, 18 feet long and more than 8 feet in diameter. The greenhouse units would likely be buried under surface soil or regolith in order to protect it from radiation in space. Therefore, according to NASA, it will require specialised lighting.