Inflatable housing or indoor agriculture, start-ups are preparing the installation of Man on the Moon

In the confined space of the International Space Station, Thomas Pesquet and his fellow astronauts grow red peppers. A way to test if he has a green thumb in orbit, 400 km from Earth. But above all to see how plants behave in microgravity, in order to prepare for future manned flights to the Moon, as well as the installation in a few years of life bases on the Earth satellite.

On the cow floor, a start-up is starting to work on the best way to produce a maximum of varieties of plants, in a limited space, in order to feed the colony of astronauts present on the lunar soil, which is not really fertile. “We design precision technologies to produce plants and meet the very different needs of a tomato, for example, and root vegetables. The objective is also to have an autonomous technology, requiring the least possible maintenance ”, indicates Paul-Hector Oliver, president of Orius Technologies.

Find applications on Earth

His young company will therefore work with the space clinic to select the plants necessary for the best food balance for astronauts, while developing its technological prototype which will use as little substrate as possible.

This young shoot is one of the five entities to have just joined the first global incubator dedicated exclusively to the Moon called “TechTheMoon”. Supported by the National Center for Space Studies and Nubbo, the regional start-up incubator and accelerator, this business incubator must help project leaders for a year to move from a good idea to a viable solution, as well. both technically and financially. And which may also find applications on Earth.

Mobile inflatable habitat

Just as the future inhabitants will have to feed themselves, they will also have to have a roof. While waiting to build regolith housing, moon dust, Spartan Space, also embarked on the TechTheMoon adventure, has developed an inflatable habitat concept. As a turtle carries its house on its back, a lunar spacecraft could have an inflatable habitat on its roof that unfolds. The young company, awarded by the Jacques Rougerie architectural foundation, is manufacturing its EuroHab in Grenoble, which could be installed on the EL3, the versatile and autonomous lunar lander developed by the European Space Agency.

“It lands with the lander before the astronauts arrive, it opens like a flower and settles in”, describes Peter Weiss, the founder of Spartan Space who works alongside two French astronauts, Jean-Jacques Favier and Jean -François Clervoy. And a model of which will be presented in reduced size at the Dubai World Fair.

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