Mascate – The “Martian” garden for the international Amadee-18 mission has an Italian footprint. It consists of 5 astronauts in Oman preparing for future Mars missions for four weeks. Realised along with ASI, ENEA and the University of Milan within the HortExtreme experiment, the garden consists of a 4 meter squared contained area where four species of micro-vegetables will be cultivated, among which red cabbage and radish- which were chosen specifically because their life cycle consists of 15 days and they guarantee the required nutrional value by members of the mission in order to offer a high quality diet thanks to a cultivation system based on recycling of water (hydroponic system) and without the use of pesticides or other chemicals. The Mars garden prototype was officially given to the Austrian Space Forum (OeWF) who was the coordinator of the Amadee-18 mission in which the Astronomical Organisation of Oman and other ineternational research in the field of aerospace engineering and human space exploration. On January 15th, the prototype will be shipped from Innsbruck to the base camp in Oman: in the hands of the astronaut Claudia Kobald and on February 1st it will commence its exploratory mission on Mars simulation. “It regards crucial issues pertaining to missions for human exploration that have great potential of a transfer to earth of knowledge gained for resolving the issue of environmental sustainability and energy efficiency”, underlined Gabriele Mascetti, director of the Human Flight Unit of the Italian Space Agency. “Our effort in research on bioregenerative systems to support life will give us useful information for our journey towards realising a human expedition to Mars. The agreement with the Austrian Space Forum was able to get off the ground thanks to the collaboration and the support of the Italian Mars Society” concluded Mascetti.(9colonne)
