Design of the Command and Data Handling System of a Controlled Environment Agriculture System

Abstract

In recent years there has been a growing interest in space research and exploration by government entities and private companies, which raises the question of how future scientists and explorers will be able to support crews to the Moon or Mars, when time comes. This leads to many other questions, questions whose possible solution lies in the development of new technologies. Among the questions to be answered is how to provide food, which is one of the most important, since space, as is well known, is a very extreme environment for living beings, such as plants (the main source of food for humans), so it is necessary to design a controlled environment, for their optimal growth, that allows constant food production, with a high nutritional value and efficiency in energy and supplies. Currently, this type of technology is being developed and experimented with at the Evolution & Design of Environmentally-closed Nutrition-Sources (EDEN) Laboratory at DLR. This document explains the development of the system that allows the collection, visualization and storage of data, as well as the control of the different systems that make up and enable this controlled environment for the optimum growth of the plants with the help of the LabVIEW graphical programming environment. Which satisfactorily fulfills the requirements established at the beginning of the project, requirements that will allow the development of future experiments and implementation of new technologies related to Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) in the EDEN Laboratory.