The EDEN ISS greenhouse is a space-analog test facility near the German Neumayer III station in Antarctica. The facility is part of the project of the same name and was designed and built starting from March 2015 and eventually deployed in Antarctica in January 2018. The nominal operation of the greenhouse started on February 7th and continued until the 20th of November. The purpose of the facility is to enable multidisciplinary research on topics related to future plant cultivation on human space exploration missions. Research on food quality and safety, plant health monitoring, microbiology, system validation, human factors and horticultural sciences was conducted. Part of the latter is the determination of the biomass production of the different crops. The data on this topic is presented in this paper. During the first season 26 different crops were grown on the 12.5 m² cultivation area of the greenhouse. A large number of crops were grown continuously throughout the 9 months of operation, but there were also crops that were only grown a few times for test purposes. The focus of this season was on growing lettuce, leafy greens and fresh vegetables. In total more than 268 kg of edible biomass was produced by the EDEN ISS greenhouse facility in 2018. Most of the harvest was cucumbers (67 kg), lettuces (56 kg), leafy greens (49 kg), and tomatoes (50 kg) complemented with smaller amounts of herbs (12 kg), radish (8 kg), and kohlrabi (19 kg). The environmental set points for the crops were 330–600 μmol/(m^2*s) LED light, 21°C, ∼65% relative humidity, 1000 ppm and the photoperiod was 17 h per day. The overall yearly productivity of the EDEN ISS greenhouse in 2018 was 27.4 kg/m², which is equal to 0.075 kg/(m^2*d). This paper shows in detail the data on edible and inedible biomass production of each crop grown in the EDEN ISS greenhouse in Antarctica during the 2018 season.

In the next 10 to 20 years humankind will return to the Moon and/or travel to Mars. It is likely that astronauts will eventually build permanent settlements there, as a base for long-term crew tended research tasks. It is obvious that the crew of such settlements will need food to survive. With current mission architectures the provision of food for longduration missions away from Earth requires a significant number of resupply flights. Furthermore, it would be infeasible to provide the crew with continuous access to fresh produce, specifically crops with high water content such as tomatoes and peppers, on account of their limited shelf life. A greenhouse as an integrated part of a planetary surface base would be one solution to solve this challenge for long-duration missions. Astronauts could grow their own fresh fruit and vegetables in-situ to be more independent from supply from Earth. This paper presents the results of the design project for such a greenhouse, which was carried out by DLR and its partners within the framework of the Micro-Ecological Life Support System Alternative (MELiSSA) program. The consortium performed an extensive system analysis followed by a definition of system and subsystem requirements for greenhouse modules. Over 270 requirements were defined in this process. Afterwards the consortium performed an in-depth analysis of illumination strategies, potential growth accommodations and shapes for the external structure. Five different options for the outer shape were investigated, each of them with a set of possible internal configurations. Using the Analytical Hierarchy Process, the different concept options were evaluated and ranked against each other. The design option with the highest ranking was an inflatable outer structure with a rigid inner core, in which the subsystems are mounted. The inflatable shell is wrapped around the core during launch and transit to the lunar surface. The paper provides an overview of the final design, which was further detailed in a concurrent engineering design study. During the study, the subsystem parameters (e.g. mass, power, performance) were calculated and evaluated. The results of the study were further elaborated, leading to a lunar greenhouse concept that fulfils all initial requirements. The greenhouse module has a total cultivation area of more than 650 m² and provides more than 4100 kg of edible dry mass over the duration of the mission. Based on the study, the consortium also identified technology and knowledge gaps (not part of this paper), which have to be addressed in future projects to make the actual development of such a lunar greenhouse, and permanent settlements for long-term human-tended research tasks on other terrestrial bodies, feasible in the first place.

The future of human space exploration is aimed at long-term missions to Moon and Mars. Currently, plans are elaborated by NASA, ESA, CNSA and others for a return to the lunar environment within the next decade as an intermediate step towards the goal of reaching the surface of Mars. For sustenance and crew comfort the crew of such long-duration missions should be provided with fresh food on the lunar or Martian surface. Due to the associated power demand, the required resources and technological complexity, this is a major challenge for this kind of missions. To continuously provide fresh food without the need for cargo transfer from Earth towards Moon or Mars an on-site greenhouse system is required, producing the fresh food in situ. The associated effort and cost for all resources to be transported to the base of operation prohibit any waste of resources, requiring a system operating in a (nearly) closed loop. Developing and validating a prototype for an effective and efficient greenhouse, labeled future exploration greenhouse (FEG) for space exploration has been the goal of the EDEN ISS project, funded by the EU, in the past 4 years. This paper shows the results of a design elaboration of the FEG into a greenhouse for planetary deployment on Moon or Mars. Guided by lessons learned from operating the FEG in Antarctica for one year and based on assumptions concerning the mission scenario, e.g. assuming an existing base infrastructure on-site, the presented design incorporates a plant growth area which is more than a factor of two larger than the prototype. The total mass of the cylindrical system, including equipment required during launch, transfer and landing, is about 19 mT, fitting into a Falcon 9 launcher. The versatile design is compatible with a wide variety of mission scenarios, e.g. ESA’s Moon Village, and currently public mission plans.