Amount of funding awarded
$1,154.35
Budget Report
View budget report.
How the program has supported you
The PAF program has allowed us to continue with Project FARM (Feeding All Resident Martians). Our team has been eager to tackle the problem of providing sustainable food to future martian astronauts . With the provided funding we have been able to further develop our own custom-built acrylic vacuum chamber. There have significant design reviews on the current design to improve the safety when operating the chamber. Additionally, with the funding provided by PAF, we were able to complete a functional electrical control and monitor system. This allowed us to operate the chamber at our desired condition and to collect valuable data for data analysis. This chamber will be critical for providing novel scientific data to the space exploration community about the behavior of plant growth at sub-atmospheric pressures.
Outcomes
On average, the UBC Mars Colony team had about 15+ students working on Project FARM throughout the year on 2 different subteams – Mechanical and Electrical. The electrical team learned and applied control methods to program and control the vacuum pump and collect data from the sensors. This project was selected as one of the 15 student teams to presented at the 2022 International Astronautical Congress in Paris. Unfortunately, due to unpredicted member alterations, we are unable to travel and present our work this year. So far we have been able to build the first version of the low pressure growth chamber, which is equipped with fully functional control systems. Members have been working on proposals to further refine the scope of the project to have a chamber which is not limited to only growing plants.
