Tupperware Containers To Help To Improve ‘Astronauts’ Diet In The Space: Hello, Everyone Today I am going to share some exciting facts on the Tupperware containers to help to improve astronauts’ diet in the space.
Tupperware Containers To Help To Improve ‘Astronauts’ Diet In The Space
The Tupperware, is a manufacturer of household plastic ware, is now helping the NASA to improve astronauts’ diet through providing fresh food in the space.
Since in the year 2015, NASA astronauts have to supplement their space diet with a fresh green grown in the Vegetable Production System which is known as Veggie on the International Space Station.
One of the challenges with the growing plants in space in Veggie has to keep them adequately watered.
The Tupperware Brands Corporation has lent its design expertise to help to develop a new approach to watering plants in the space, NASA says in a statement.
With the Veggie system, astronauts have to push water into each plant pillow with a syringe.
In previous crops growing in the Veggie system using pillows, some plants fare better than the others because not all the plants are receiving an equal amount of water and oxygen.
“The primary goal of this newly developed plant growing system, the Passive Orbital Nutrient Delivery System, or PONDS, is to achieving the uniform plant growth,” says the Nicole Dufour, Veggie project manager at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The NASA research scientist Howard Levine initially designed and prototyped PONDS, but in the early year 2017 handed it off to Techshot that is a private spaceflight services firm – to further develop and certify the demonstration unit for use on the orbiting laboratory.
Techshot is reaching out to Tupperware to help create the new system that is providing an alternative to the plant pillows.
The PONDS units have features that are designing to mitigate microgravity effects on the water distribution, increase oxygen availability and to provide sufficient room for the root zone growth.
The new PONDS system is requiring less crew maintenance and uses the absorbent mats that leverage the basic principles of surface tension and capillary action to wick water to the seeds and roots through a reservoir system.
This approach passively disperses water evenly through each plant cylinder which is containing within the PONDS’ reservoirs, facilitating consistent seed germination and seedling development into the mature plants.
“Tupperware brings a wealth of innovative design and knowledge of the plastics to this project,” says Dave Reed, Techshot PONDS project manager and the company’s director of the launch operations.
The upcoming SpaceX CRS-14 commercial has resupplied the mission that will include seven PONDS modules plus an adapter plate, so the blades have installed in the Veggie system.
Including are four black opaque modules that will grow Outredgeous red romaine lettuce and the same lettuce that has growing previously in the Veggie facility for about a month.
Six more PONDS modules are slating to launch on an Orbital ATK commercial resupply mission later this year and will seed with the Mizuna mustard.
Both the lettuce and the mustard have already growing in plant pillows as a part of the previous Veggie experiments, so the plant pillow and PONDS growth data are comparing against one another, says NASA.
So, these are the points to describing the Tupperware containers to help to improve astronauts’ diet in the space.
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