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Active TRL 4 (started at 3, targeting 7)
Food and nutrition are critical to health and performance and therefore the success of human space exploration. However, the shelf-stable food system currently in use on the International Space Station (ISS) is not sustainable as missions become longer and further from Earth, even with modification for mass and water efficiencies. Bioregenerative foods as part of the astronaut diet are expected to provide whole food nutrition, improve menu variety, and positively impact behavioral health. Significant advances in both knowledge and technology are still needed to inform productivity, nutrition, acceptability, safety, reliability, and operations of bioregenerative food systems. Utah State University's Utah Re-Usable Root Module (URRM) is designed to enable continuous crop production in microgravity. URRM provides a uniform peat-based root zone through continuous monitoring and control of water and nutrients. The system has been used to grow multiple crop cycles in the same substrate using the signal from the embedded water content sensors to inform Ohalo III of root zone moisture status and the need to replenish water and nutrients at frequent intervals to maintain an optimal water/air nutrient balance in the root zone. The Phase B grant advanced the technology and design to demonstrate functionality on the ground and a follow-on contract was awarded on 09/08/25 (80KSC025P0003) for the URRM team to finalize design and deliver flight hardware for test in Ohalo III aboard the ISS. Ohalo III is a prototype crop production system that will validate water/nutrient delivery and volume optimization, of candidate root module systems like URRM and advance knowledge on crop production operations which will inform design decisions for a future crop production system intended to be deployed on Deep Space Transit missions.
Ohalo III will serve as a platform to develop advanced water delivery and volume optimization concepts like Utah State University's (USU) Utah Re-Usable Root Module (URRM) that will enable future crop production operations on long duration exploration missions. USU's hardware following evaluation in Ohalo III, may prove to be the basis of the first operational crop production system in space. The integrated system will provide valuable information on the productivity, reliability, and operations associated with growing crops as a component of the exploration food system. In this capacity, Ohalo III will serve as a prototype for the crop production system that is eventually deployed on the Mars Transit Vehicle and will also inform early lunar and Mars surface crop production systems.
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