robertofurfaro

Greatest technical challenge: demonstrate that one unit of our Mars-Lunar Greenhouse can produce 50% of the calories/day needed but one (1) astronaut while completely recycling water and close the oxygen loop

This is an extremely complex system and achieving our goals is not easy, hence frustration. One thing that we are experimenting is what is called policultivation (or growing combinations of different species of vegetable in the same environment). That is a major challenge as NASA has not studies that before (only mono cultivations for which we have data). Controlling the growing environment in a multi-crop system is challenging especially when you want to maximize production. We are starting working on innovative adaptive control systems that rely on data-driven models of the system

Nutrients exist on Mars soil, but they are lacking mostly reactive nitrogen. Therefore you still have to bring nitrogen with you

One important item is ISRU (In-Situ Resource Utilization): we need to learn how to process indigenous materials on Mars (e.g. manufacturing propellant) to avoid bringing everything we need from Earth. Imagine how far west our US pioneers would have gone if they had to bring all the oxygen, water and energy sources with them....

Couple the Biosystems Engineering path that Dr. Giacomelli mentioned with Space Systems Engineering at our UA Systems and Industrial Engineering Department (we are also working on OSIRIS REx asteroid sample return mission) and your career path is defined