The Arthur Clarke Mars Greenhouse now has two webcams available for public viewing. One show a view of the greenhouse and surroundings from the outside and the other shows some of the interior plant growth trays.
Alain Berinstain, Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and University of Guelph, Principal Investigator, Arthur Clarke Mars Greenhouse
Good planning, hard work, an excellent team, and good fortune have resulted in the most successful field season for the greenhouse research team so far. This was the 5th time the Canadian Space Agency, the University of Guelph, and Simon Fraser University have mounted an expedition to Devon Island for maintenance and upgrade of the Mars Institute's Arthur Clarke Mars Greenhouse systems.
Continue reading "The Arthur Clarke Mars Greenhouse Field Season 2006: Mission Accomplished!" »
Alain Berinstain, Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and University of Guelph, Principal Investigator, Arthur Clarke Mars Greenhouse
Our research team arrived at camp on July 7 to begin an ambitious season of maintenance and improvements to the Greenhouse systems. This year, the research team consists of myself, Richard Giroux (Visiting Fellow at CSA), Matthew Bamsey (PhD candidate at the University of Guelph and CSA), Philip Neron (co-op student at CSA from Ecole de technologie superieure), Thomas Graham (PhD candidate at the University of Guelph), Anna-Lisa Paul and Rob Ferl from the University of Florida at Gainesville, and Stephen Braham from Simon Fraser University.
As we prepare to explore the Solar System once again with humans to the moon and eventually to Mars, it is clear that extended stays will require some form of biological life support, in order to decrease the amount of food, water, and air launched from Earth to keep the crews healthy. Plants in greenhouses might play a part in this closed biological life support system, by cleaning the air and water that astronauts will use, and also by providing food for them. These greenhouses will have to operate autonomously, to decrease the work required to tend the crops by astronauts, and also to increase the safety and reliability of the overall system. The systems being developed in the Arthur Clarke Mars Greenhouse are prototypes of some of the systems that may one day be launched to the moon or Mars.
Continue reading "Research Activities in the Arthur Clarke Mars Greenhouse - July 2006 Update" »
The Arthur Clarke Mars Greenhouse is currently dormant as we are in the dark period for another 9 days. However, weather permitting, we have been receiving basic environment data throughout the dark period. This is exciting for researchers as this was one of the goals we had set out to achieve. Once the dark period is over and the sun begins to shine again we should be back to regular updates including, we hope, new images from our webcams.
During the fall there was some unusual activity in and around the greenhouse and the report listed below describes what we know to date. Another update to this report will follow when we know more.
We've now entered the dark season on Devon Island meaning there will be no sunlight for the next 92 days. The next sunrise on Devon Island will be February 15th when the sun will be up for 1 hour and 2 minutes. During the dark period the webcams are in sleep mode. It should be noted that the greenhouse will still be collecting data during this time.
In early August everyone left our base camp on Devon Island in the high Arctic. However the Arthur Clarke Mars Greenhouse has been running autonomously since then. In early September we began experiencing technical difficulties with our communications link to the greenhouse. For several weeks a team of dedicated engineers worked the problem. After many long hours, communication with the greenhouse was restored.
And although communication was lost, the greenhouse systems continued to operate and the greenhouse team is collecting useful data. We have also been collecting webcam images which visually monitor the greenhouse and the surrounding environment. Next week we should be able to start posting these daily images for the public to see. Other data from the greenhouse will be made available through peer reviewed publications when ready.
The greenhouse has three webcams working to visually monitor it. Two are within the greenhouse and one outdoors. The two indoor cameras are codenamed "fallcam" and "springcam". Fallcam observes a set of growth trays that had lettuce growing in them this fall. These plants were meant to grow for just over a month after we left, then die. Then in the spring a new set of plants are scheduled to grow with the springcam webcam to monitor them. The links below show three recent images from the three webcams.
You will notice that the outdoor webcam image includes the recorded temperature, humidity level and pressure. These readings will show up on this camera from time to time. Since each webcam is timed to turn on and off for a short period of time to conserve power, the sensor data does not always have time to turn on. This data is not considered critical and is not part of the required dataset we collect.
The greenhouse and webcams are powered by stored energy from batteries which are recharged by our solar arrays and wind generators.
Recent webcam images
