NASA's Largest Plant Chamber 'Advanced Plant Habitat' Tested, Could House Large Plants In Space

NASA's Advanced Plant Habitat (APH), the largest plant chamber, aims to grow plants in space and has arrived at Kennedy Space Center in Florida this November 2016. It was transported to a laboratory at the Space Station Processing Facility.

Astronauts will have to grow their own food on a #JourneyToMars. Prototype of @Space_Station plant habitat tested: https://t.co/GxSeeOXeWU pic.twitter.com/QfXNsLHAQi

— NASA (@NASA) November 23, 2016

NASA reports that the APH will be examined and studied by NASA scientists, engineers and technicians on how to handle and assemble it before the actual APH unit arrives next year. They will also analyze how the science incorporates with different systems of the plant habitat.

APH unit is a close-loop system with the regulated environment that could house large plants. There will be green, red and blue LED lights that will be used. This is like the Veggie growth system that is now on the International Space Station. The unit is also capable of utilizing white LEDs and infrared light.

The APH unit will be equipped with 180 sensors and about four times the light output of Veggie. A small-scale experiment known as Plant Habitat 1 or PH01 will have small flowering plants related to cabbage and mustard and Arabidopsis seeds. The APH unit together with PH01 will be deployed in the International Space Station in 2017.

The "Veggie," the first plant growth system, was developed by Orbital Technologies Corp. (ORBITEC) in Madison, Wisconsin, and tested at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This system was delivered to a space station in April 2014.

The NASA astronauts and Expedition 39 then installed Veggie in the Columbus module on May 7 in an Expedite the Processing of Experiments to the Space Station (EXPRESS) rack. This resulted in the first-ever on-orbit harvest and sampling of fresh produce in 2015, according to NDTV.