Plants: a must for Martian exploration

Summary:
On future manned missions to Mars, plants will play a key role in astronaut survival. Space agencies such as ESA and NASA all have ambitious plans based on minimal use of material and energy resources, their recycling and the sustainability of the systems developed.

The terrestrial spin-offs of these projects are colossal.

From the MELiSSA project to the first peppers on the ISS, via the cultivation of microgreens, this presentation provides an overview of the current state of food plant cultivation in space and on Mars in particular, and their integration into life support systems.

Speaker's biography:
Lucie Poulet has been working for over 10 years on bioregenerative and closed-loop support systems for space.
She has just completed a postdoctorate in the Space Crop Production group at NASA's Kennedy Center in Florida, and is currently a postdoctoral researcher in process engineering at the Institut Pascal (Université Clermont Auvergne, France) on the modeling aspects of ESA's MELiSSA (Micro-Ecological Life-Support Systems Alternative) project.
In 2014, she took part in a 4-month simulation of Martian life in the HI-SEAS habitat.

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