Colleen Higgins, Kate Atkinson, Sara Lewandowski, Dave Klaus, Shawn Bockstahler, Jim Clawson, Bob Gjestvang, Aaron Frey, Ryan Reis
Aerospace Engineering Sciences
University of Colorado
NASA began a Marsport competition to elicit student involvement in the manned exploration of Mars. The Red Thumb team, comprised of students from Aerospace Engineering sciences at the University of Colorado, designed a greenhouse to be deployed on the Martian surface and meet the requirements put out by the 2002 Marsport competition while being compatable with the mission architecture set forth by the current Mars reference mission.
Intrinsic difficulties of the Martian environment are discussed in this report including radiation, micrometeorites, and dust storms. A diet augmentation and crop selection discusses the amount of calories that will need to be produced by the greenhouse. Crop selection is also discussed, as the crops chosen will have a significant contribution to crew nutrition, greenhouse size, harvesting and processing tasks.
The final greenhouse system is comprised of seven modular, inflatable greenhouses called AGPods, a maintenance bay for the AGPods and harvesting tasks, and a 30 m2 PlantHab for salad type crops.