CubeSats are increasingly important for space research. Their low cost and short term mission durations permit mankind to conduct experiments with unproven underlying theory. One of the most critical experiments is how a plant might grow in the low earth orbit under the effect of microgravity, radiation and other extreme environments in space.
Several universities in the province of Gelderland (The Netherlands) have formed project teams under the name; GelreSat. These teams are responsible of designing a 3U CubeSat which will house three experiments. One among these experiments raises the question of; how to germinate a potato seed and get seedlings to thrive for 30 days inside a chamber. This experiment is commissioned by the Wageningen university team, who provided the requirements for the experiment and the role now rests on the shoulders of the HAN team to construct a experimental chamber which will provide a suitable environment for plant growth.
Therefore my role in the team was to conduct a research of how to provide an optimum earth-like environment with regulating system inside the CubeSat chamber wherein the germination of potato seed will take place. Providing this environment can decrease germination time, improve uniformity and increase the growth chances of that seeds and the seedling in space.
Moisture, temperature, and light are the most crucial factors in this medium because any lack or abundance of the aforementioned factors can lead to deleterious consequences on that seed. Hence an automated medium regulating and data acquisition system must be developed that monitors and records periodically the required environmental conditions. In that case questions are raised about the right selection of the components that will form this regulating system.
The achievements that I had reached during this project are:
Firstly designing 6 subsystems i.e. temperature system, air flow system, humidity system, observation system, air composition system, and light intensity system, that regards as complementary to one another in order to serve the goal of providing the optimum environment for plant growth in the space.
To read more over our research click on the following link: CubeSat Regulating System
- Date: November 7, 2020
- Categories: C++Control System(PID-Fuzzy)
- Client HAN GelreSat