Postcards from Mars

Analog Astronaut Conference 2025 concludes

Analog Astronaut Conference 2025, Mars yard workshop with Dr. Christopher Hamilton, UA planetary geologist

The Analog Astronaut Conference has enjoyed its fourth year at Biosphere 2. This assembly of artists, writers, innovators, engineers, teachers, researchers, do-it-yourselfers, medical professionals, and yes, people who have made it to the edge of the Earth’s atmosphere and into orbit came together once again to share food, stories, science, and the warmth of direct conversations.

At a time when it seems the world is pushing everyone apart, it is comforting to be in the presence of people from so many countries—Armenia, Germany, Poland, England, Columbia, Argentina, Canada, Mexico, Kenya, the United States and more—to receive the music of accents of a half dozen languages during breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The subject matter of the talks ranged from diversity and inclusion in future human space travel to the science of CO2 scrubbers, from home-grown greenhouse structures built from repurposed water tanks to emotional intelligence as a tool for human interaction in the confines of an isolated habitat.

The SAM staff hosted three workshops:

  • Basics of Wound Care and Suturing by David Wexler, MD and Dr Bindhu Oommen, MD
  • Bioregenerative Life Support with Hydroponics by Atila Meszaros and Luna Powell
  • A Mars Geology Tour by Dr. Christopher Hamilton and Tasha Coelho

The Wound Care workshop was hosted in the SAM Operations Center. The Hydroponics workshop was hosted in the SAM Test Module. And the Mars Geology workshop was hosted in the SAM Mars yard.

In addition, five SAM team members gave expert talks on a wide variety of subject matter:

  • Kai Staats opened the conference with review of the past year at SAM and a look to the future as the SAM team transitions from construction into research for bioregeneration, air revitalization, and advanced medical care for long-duration missions far from Earth.
  • Arizona State School of Earth and Space Exploration Planetary Geology undergraduate and SAM team member Tasha Coelho gave a talk about the current science investigations on Mars.
  • Purdue graduate and new Mechanical Engineer at SAM Griffin Hentzen gave a talk about the new Experimental Air Revitalization Laboratory (EARL) room and carbon dioxide removal system being built at SAM.
  • Bryan Versteeg, world-renowned space architect and member of the SAM team since 2019 gave a talk about his life’s work in helping envision the future of our species as we learn to live in free space and on the surface of the Moon and Mars.
  • Thomas Hoffman of the new Surgical Bay Research Group at SAM (with David Wexler and Bindhu Oommen) gave a talk about the history and current state of aerospace medicine for spaceflight.
By |2025-05-06T06:11:59+00:00May 5th, 2025|Categories: In the news|0 Comments

New SAM Team page

SAM Team montage

Since January 2021 the SAM team has grown from Kai Staats and Trent Tresch and a host of volunteers to an international cadre of staff members who contribute a wealth of knowledge, experience, skills, and motivation to bring to life an advanced research center for human space exploration.

Visit the all-new SAM Team page

By |2025-05-05T18:13:20+00:00April 25th, 2025|Categories: Research & Development|0 Comments

Newly bred compact tomato offers potential for vertical farming

Kai Staats and Changbin Chen in the Test Module of SAM at Biosphere 2

In an era defined by climate volatility and resource scarcity, researchers are developing crops that can survive — and thrive — under pressure.

One such innovation is the newly released tomato variety “Desert Dew” bred by Changbin Chen, associate professor in Arizona State University’s School of Life Sciences. More than just a tomato, Desert Dew represents a leap forward in sustainable agriculture, optimized for rapid growth, nutrient density and adaptability to extreme environments.

Read the full article …

By |2025-04-15T00:13:49+00:00April 14th, 2025|Categories: In the news|0 Comments

USSF Guardian advances space agriculture research in NASA study

William Wallace at SAM, Biosphere 2

March 3, 2025
by Staff Sgt. Jaime Sanchez
Space Base Delta 1

SCHRIEVER SPACE FORCE BASE, Colo. — In an ongoing NASA study set in the backdrop of Arizona, U.S. Space Force Spc. 4 William Wallace, 4th Space Operations Squadron payload engineer, was invited to further continue the science community’s understanding of extraterrestrial agriculture.

Read the full article …

By |2025-03-04T14:56:41+00:00March 4th, 2025|Categories: In the news|0 Comments

APUS ARG-1S Red Crew Egress

APUS ARG-1S Red Crew exists SAM after five days sealed inside this pressurized facility.

APUS ARG-1S Red Crew Keston Denhalter, Aedanaya Diamond, Gilbert Wilkerson, and Commander Laura Rieske egressed from the SAM research vessel today, February 18, at 10:03 am. They were met in the SAM Mars yard by the members of the Blue Crew and Mission Control.

In the debrief that followed at the SAM Operations Center, the mission was described as a complete success with all science objectives met, data collected on several vital systems (CO2, RH, potable water, hydroponics), and a successful Mode 3 run in which the vessel was fully sealed for four hours.

Photos and narrative coming soon!

By |2025-02-18T21:04:14+00:00February 18th, 2025|Categories: Research Teams|0 Comments

Storytelling with data: an analysis of RH at Mission Control

An analysis of RH from Mission Control at SAM, Biosphere 2

SAM offers a unique, highly engaging experience for visiting crews as it likely the first time they have monitored carbon dioxide (CO2), relative humidity (RH), temperature (temp), VOCs, and pressure in a hermetically sealed vessel for the duration of an analog mission.

While prior discussions of air quality in SAM usually focus on CO2, the APUS ARG-1S crew was asked to also keep a close watch on relative humidity as they are the second crew to condense the moisture contained in the vessel’s body of air, filter it, and then add it back into their potable water supply.

There are a total of seven devices able to condense water vapor into liquid water within SAM: 2 mini-split heat pumps and 2 dehumidifiers in the Test Module; 1 mini-split and 1 dehumidifier in the Engineering Bay, and 1 mini-split in the Crew Quarters. As the TM currently contains two racks active in hydroponics to provide fresh vegetables for the crew, the mini-splits must remain set to Heat, even in this too-warm winter in order to maintain an approximation of the ideal growing temperatures. In heating mode, any condensation occurs on the condenser, outside of SAM.

The dehumidifiers can be set to presets of Continuous, 55%, or 45% with manual setting of a much wider range. They activate when they sense the relative humidity to be at or above the given threshold. The mini-splits condense water at the air handler inside the habitat, or can be set to Dehumidify in which they neither heat nor cool the habitat, but work instead to capture water from the air and drain it into a potable bucket, one below each wall-mounted unit.

As such, the crew may elect to set the mini-splits to Heat, Cool, or Dehumidify as they see fit in the Engineering Bay and Crew Quarters, manually changing the settings throughout the day and night. The crew has access to a local, real-time display of the SIMOC Live data via the dedicated terminal in the EB, or on any of their laptops.

At the SAM Operations Center and Mission Control, which for this mission was occupied by two dedicated officers and the rotating crew before and after the crew switch on day 5 (through the airlock), the same data is also available, delayed by 20 minutes to simulate the light-travel time from Mars to Earth.

One of the functions of Mission Control is to monitor the air quality, at all times, and to guide the crew as to how to manage the components. So, when a regular oscillation of humidity followed a certain spike, as registered in both the EB and CQ, it invoked a discussion at Mission Control and dialog (delayed by 40 minutes round-trip) with the crew.

Is this a false reading? And if not,
What is causing the spike in humidity?
What is bringing it back down again?

Is this a false reading? Given the data visualization on the SIMOC Live dashboard, there was some concern for the spikes and valleys. However, as RH and temperature are included with both the SDC CO2 and BME pressure sensors, there are two RH and temp sensors on-board each SIMOC Live board, and one board in each of the four modules. This is important when analyzing any of the data streams, for it helps to immediately determine if a short-term fluctuation is in fact a representation of the real world, or an anomaly in that particular sensor and data stream. It was confirmed that this is a real reading as a total of four sensors (2 in EB, 2 in CQ) were matched in the pattern.

What is causing the spike in humidity? The first guess was boiling water for coffee or tea, cooking, or exercise. But intuitively the spike was too large, registering in both the EB and CQ. In fact, it appeared that the humidity was propagating upstream, meaning against the flow of air from the Air Intake Room (SAM AIR) to the TM, EB, and CQ. As such, this had to be a good bit of moisture released all at once.

If not cooking or human respiration, then what? We then asked the crew if they had switched the mini-split units from Dehumidify to Heat, as this would disable the function of condensing moisture and quite possibly dump moisture into the air. The theory (proposed by Kai) was that the heat exchangers have a large copper surface area by which a relatively large volume of air can interact, thereby heating, cooling, and/or removing moisture. If that surface area is wet with condensate, and the mode is switched to Heat, the coils will rapidly move from cold to hot and immediately eject the water molecules back into the air as soon as the fans spin up.

We inquired if in fact the crew has made this switch, and yes, they confirmed this to be true.

What is bringing it back down again? The oscillation then is the dehumidifier in the same module working to reduce the humidity, turning off when it reaches its desired low threshold, then kicking in again as the humidity rises.

Case solved!

By |2025-02-20T21:40:45+00:00February 16th, 2025|Categories: Research Teams|0 Comments
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