Page 74 - Lighting Magazine July 2018

Final froNtiEr
A proposed “Gateway Garden”
prototype food production facility for deep space exploration is already on the planning board.
the most technically advanced and cost-e ective products to help them reach their yield, quality, and project goals. Members of NASA’s food production research team presented Hort Americas with a list of features they wanted from a lighting xture, and Hort Americas then used its network to help NASA team up with OSRAM to learn more about the Phy- tofy RL horticulture lighting technology.
At the NASA facility, Mickens has been ex- perimenting with combinations of LED colors and documenting the results for the past three years. “I set up di erent light regimens and grow the same crop using \[several\] recipes to see how the plants respond,” he says. Observing changes is meticu- lous work since the variations can be subtle.
For example, by altering the light recipe, when plants are made to a smaller size (i.e. “dwarfed”), it ampli es the amount of nutrients. Through radia- tion with light of di erent wavelengths, the growth cycles of plants can be controlled and accelerated, allowing the plants to be harvested more o en.
Lately Mickens has been exploring the e ects of UV LED, a process that has not been used on the Space Station yet. Mickens explains that UV’s shorter wavelengths “stress” the plants slightly, causing them to protect themselves, thereby bol- stering the amount of antioxidants in the plants, which also changes the taste.
The Phytofy system includes a UV channel that gives researchers the ability to add a brief UV light to document how plants react and change. According to OSRAM, Phytofy has more LEDs, which means a higher Photosynthetic Photon Flux (PPF) for measuring light emission by calculating how many photons are coming out of the light every second — an important metric for plant researchers in determining the most e cient and e ective light recipes. Phytofy also contains an irradiance map so scientists can see the irradi- ance using Osram so ware, without the need to measure irradiance separately before changing the light se ing.
“I’m hoping NASA can use the results of my work
to \[develop\] recipes for multiple crops; right now I’m just working with three,” Mickens comments. “The real treasure of working at NASA is that we can apply these ndings right here on earth.”
NASA scientists are hopeful that smart horti- culture lighting systems, and other lighting-related developments, will lead to a greater leap forward into deep space travel far beyond what has been a empted before. A proposed “Gateway Garden” prototype food production facility for deep space exploration is already on the planning board.
According to NASA, a BioSentinel mission has been selected as “one of the secondary payloads to y on the Space Launch System’s rst Explo- ration Mission (EM-1) planned for launch in July 2018.” The primary objective of BioSentinel is to develop a biosensor using a simple model organ- ism to detect, measure, and correlate the impact of space radiation to living organisms over long durations beyond Low Earth Orbit (LEO). What does this have to do with lighting? The BioSentinel has a “micro uidics card” for studying the impact of interplanetary space radiation on yeast. Once in orbit, the growth and metabolic activity of the yeast will be measured using a 3-color LED detec- tion system and a metabolic indicator dye.
In the meantime, OSRAM’s smart horticulture lighting system is being piloted through a series of collaborations with universities and research labs around the world that are using the technologies and sharing insights. Installation of Phytofy RL within a growth chamber at Kennedy Space Cen- ter in Florida was completed recently, with plans to move the con guration to one or more of the Center’s walk-in plant grow rooms.
“OSRAM is developing smart, innovative lighting technologies that can improve food production in a variety of environments, even unique environ- ments like space,” said Steve Graves, Strategic Program Manager of Urban & Digital Farming/ Osram Innovation, Americas Region. “Many of the world’s coolest and most bene cial inventions have come from scientists at NASA over the past several decades, and to play a role in empowering further innovation through the use of our tech- nologies is an honor. We are excited about the possibilities Phytofy RL will bring to a wide variety of horticulture applications, and our teams are excited to continue learning and re ning its set-up before ultimately bringing this exclusive solution to market within the next year.” 
72 enLIGHTenment Magazine | july 2018
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