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Imagine living in a place where your survival depends on living within your boundaries, not consuming more food and energy than you produce, providing enough fresh water and air to live, waste to an absolute Minimum to reduce, recycle everything you can and avoid anything contaminating the environment around you. This is what astronauts have to deal with to some extent on board the astronauts International Space Stationand what they would have to deal with on a larger scale in future settlements the moon or Mars.
But we have to continue living like this Earth if we want to protect our environment, which is one of this year’s themes Space Weekruns from October 4th to 10th.
A space station or moon base is largely a closed system. By that we mean that it has to produce its own resources and then recycle them and put them back into the system because they are limited. Consuming too much of it could cause astronauts to run out of air, food, water or energy, which could be fatal. Of course, there are occasional supplies from Earth, so these are not 100% closed loop systems. What is a completely closed circuit, however, is the earth itself.
Spaceship Earth
Think about it. Our planet has a certain carrying capacity, or what the Club of Rome – a think tank of academics, business leaders and politicians – calls “Limits to growth” in their famous 1973 report. They warned that the Earth was beginning to reach its carrying capacity and that we would soon be generating too much energy, eating too much, not producing enough fresh water and emitting greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere that would lead to our global Circulatory system is indeed not sustainable Climate change grows increasingly harmful Every year, droughts, famines, forest fires and extreme weather conditions become more and more frequent; some might say we have already reached this stage.
Related: Satellite data has shown that climate change is a climate crisis
This is where learning to live in space can help us learn how to live sustainably on Earth. It is not a new idea, but a recent article by researchers at the German Aerospace Center in the journal Sustainable Earth Reviews succinctly summarized how technologies developed for life in closed space habitats can be applied to Earth.
They described how a space habitat must fulfill multiple functions to remain a closed system and how each of these functions can be transferred to the larger Earth scale.
First, resources must be cultivated and fed into the system. In this case, resources are everything that a living space needs to function, from food to energy. However, this concept needs to be carefully managed because if left unchecked, it is vulnerable to exploitation. For example, if all the water ice were removed from the lunar regolith too quickly, then there would be nothing left to sustain a lunar base for very long.
Secondly, it is about recycling these resources so that they are not used up too quickly. In a closed-loop habitat, unrecycled waste is costly and can degrade the habitat over time by making fewer and fewer resources available. It can also pollute the environment of the habitat and in turn affect it.
Third is self-sufficiency. Aside from occasional supplies from Earth, a space habitat must be able to produce and repair everything it needs.
Finally, a closed habitat must be resilient enough to support its crew and all other animal and plant species indefinitely. If the system breaks down due to misuse, the lifespan of the habitat is significantly shortened.
We can see how each of these can be applied to Earth. Intensive agriculture, mining, fishing, etc. show how we exploit the cultivation of resources in our closed cycle earth. Recycling can help us conserve our resources without polluting the environment with waste. If communities can become more self-sufficient, carbon dioxide emissions can be reduced because resources do not need to be transported to communities from external regions.
Earth has proven resilient to life for nearly four billion years, but our careless use of the environment through overconsumption is testing that resilience.
Space on Earth
Interestingly, technologies developed for use in space can also help on Earth.
A classic example is solar panels. Invented in 1954, in the era of coal-fired power plants, solar panels weren’t exactly all the rage since there was little use for photovoltaic cells on Earth at the time. Rather, solar panels made their breakthrough in space for the first time and supplied satellites with electricity as early as 1958 with the Vanguard 1 satellite. The amount of money that spacefaring nations were able to put into research and development of solar cells meant that by the 1970s these cells were powerful enough to be used on Earth. Nowadays we find solar cells everywhere, an average panel produces 1.5 kilowatts of electricity every day; and as of 2023, solar energy will generate a total of 5.5% of the world’s electricity, without the harmful emissions of coal-fired power plants or the toxic waste of nuclear fission reactors.
Another technology developed in space that can contribute to a more sustainable way of life on Earth is food-based. Astronauts grow plants on the International Space Station.
The experiment, known as the Vegetable Production System, first produced lettuce in 2021, which was harvested by NASA astronaut Michael Hopkins. The experiment revolves around planting seeds in a “seed cushion,” controlled release of fertilizer and clay, and using specially designed LED lights to promote photosynthesis, emitting more red and blue light that promotes plant growth. These lights are now being adapted for “vertical farming” on Earth, a sustainable method of growing crops that don’t take up too much land in urban areas and recycle their water, just like on the space station. By growing food on vertical farms near built-up communities, people can save on transportation costs and intensive farming, both of which produce high carbon dioxide emissions.
The water cycle
Speaking of water, it is paramount that water is recycled on the space station, as its weight makes it costly to get it from Earth. All water on the International Space Station is recycled through a water recovery system as part of the station’s environmental control and life support system, which can convert the water vapor that humans exhale into the air, sweat, and even urinate into drinking water (which is apparently the case). , say astronauts, tastes quite good!). The urine processor assembly uses vacuum distillation to extract clean water from astronauts’ urine, leaving behind a disgusting-sounding “urine brine.” Since there is still usable water in this brine, a brine processor assembly was even developed – in a closed circulation system, every resource must be used to its full extent.
Although we don’t have to drink water made from urine on Earth, there are many places in the world where fresh, clean water is scarce. NASA’s water recovery technology has been licensed to companies to produce portable filters that allow communities to recover clean water from contaminated supplies.
Carbon purification
In addition to water vapor, astronauts also exhale carbon dioxide.
The astronauts continue Apollo 13 They learned firsthand the dangers of carbon dioxide formation when they had to hurriedly build a carbon dioxide filter from spare parts on the way home from the moon. Carbon dioxide must also be cleaned from the air on the International Space Station.
Previously, oxygen was produced on the ISS by a system that extracted it every year from 400 liters of water pumped from Earth. Therefore it was not a closed system. Now the European Space Agency has developed the Advanced Closed Loop System (ACLS), capable of converting 50% of the station’s carbon dioxide into oxygen, no longer requiring large amounts of water to be brought up from Earth. The ACLS carbon dioxide reprocessing plant mixes hydrogen and carbon dioxide extracted from the air to produce water and methane. The methane is released into space as waste, but an oxygen generation assembly is able to split the water into oxygen and hydrogen, with the latter going back into the ACLS system to start the cycle again.
However, before ACLS, carbon dioxide was removed exclusively via a mineral called zeolite, whose pores are small enough to capture carbon dioxide molecules and then flush them out into space. Now Stefano Brandani and Giulio Santori from the University of Edinburgh are exploring ways to use zeolite technology to reduce carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere. They imagine giant fans sucking air filled with carbon dioxide toward stations of zeolite beds that remove the carbon dioxide from the air. The same technology could also be used closer to the source to remove carbon dioxide from industrial exhaust before it enters the atmosphere. Although it cannot remove all carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and prevent global warming, carbon capture technology could help mitigate climate change and help the world meet the goal of global warming of no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius .
Similar stories:
— Scientists map Earth’s rivers from space before climate change ravages our planet
— Why is the weather on Earth getting stranger and stranger?
— Should we seal DNA samples from Earth’s endangered species in a lunar crater?
Given the common criticism of space programs around the world that they are expensive luxuries where the money could instead be spent elsewhere on Earth, it is ironic that technology designed to help humans live in space , could help us live better on earth. Of course, space travel isn’t inherently environmentally friendly – a rocket can emit up to 300 tons of carbon dioxide every time it launches – but when used correctly, the technology used in space can make a difference by helping us become a greener planet. Earth is, after all, our most incredible spaceship.
This article is part of a special Space.com series in honor of Space Week 2024, October 4-10. Check back every day for a new post about the interactions between space technology and climate change.
