Moscow. November 30. INTERFAX-AVN-a Prototype of the Vitacycle-T greenhouse for growing edible biomass on the ISS will be ready next year, the press service of the high-Tech research Institute of inorganic materials named after academician A. A. Bochvar reported.
"The greenhouse for growing vegetables on the International space station is being developed by the research Institute of space instrumentation together with the Institute of biomedical problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The prototype will be ready next year, " the press service said.
As noted in the report, VNIINM takes part in the project, developing porous titanium pipes for water supply of root modules.
"You can't just water plants in space: the jet will turn into drops that will fly in different directions. And if you feed water through the capillary structure of the root module, the liquid will slowly seep through the pores and get exactly to the roots of plants. The titanium tubes in the root module will be located inside artificial soil, " said Maxim Sheverdyaev, head of the Department of special non-nuclear materials and technologies of VNIINM JSC.
According to the company, the Russian greenhouse "Vitacycle-T" will consist of a drum with six root modules. Due to this design, the greenhouse will have to have "a higher specific productivity of edible biomass in relation to the resources consumed by it than earlier analogues".
In December 2018, Vladimir Sychev, Deputy Director for science at the IBP RAS, said that a full-time Vitacycle greenhouse is being developed for the Russian segment of the ISS, but, according to him, "the work is going with a lot of problems."
Sychev also noted that Russian cosmonauts on the ISS will be left without a scientific greenhouse. The modified Lada greenhouse was destroyed in the accident of the Progress MS-04 cargo ship in December 2016, and the development of the new greenhouse is likely to come to an end by the then-planned end of the ISS in 2024.