PONDS. Passive Orbital Nutrient Delivery System

The system my team & I created to go to the International Space Station.

VEGGIE. Vegetation Enclosure to Gestate and Grow Interplanetary Edibles

The enclosure that houses the P.O.N.D.S. system and it’s predecessors.

“PONDS was an opportunity to do something that no one else has done before. People have been growing plants in space since the Apollo era, but not like this."

- Dave Reed, NASA Counterpart

UNDERSTANDING NASA’S NEEDS

Challenges with NASA’s Current Design:

VEGGIE's First Tenant: BAGS / "Biological Aggregate Growth System"

Each one designed to disperse water evenly across the roots via a capillary mesh.

PROBLEM A: Micro-Gravity: 1 Fluid Dynamics: 0

Astronauts eventually needed to individually see to each bag as water sent to the full system wasn’t evenly dispersed between all 6 bags.

PROBLEM C: Maintenance

The BAGS were heavily pliable and interacting with them meant crushing the root system. As such to harvest or repair BAGS meant potentially damaging them.

PROBLEM B: Capillary Mesh Failure

Even when a bag received proper nutrients, the capillary mesh would eventually clog at the source and cease sending water/nutrients evenly across the roots.

Tenant Troubles: $100k Dud

What works well on Earth, may not in space. ONLY 40% OF ALL BAGS yielded vegetation.

Expectations from NASA’s Scientists:

Dr. Howard Levine

- Understanding the needs, goals & challenges of his undertaking and how my team can play a part in its success.

The Current State of Things

- An identical ISS VEGGIE replication sits on Earth: same Temperature, Humidity, Air Flow, On/Off Cycle. And what happens on the ISS is mimicked on Earth (minus the extreme lack of gravity).

UNDERSTANDING OUR CANVAS

- Toured NASA’s development center, spoke with their model shop & development personal to get an comprehensive understanding of the VEGGIE system.

IMPROVISATION

And because NASA said it would take a month to get us CAD files due to government regulations, we had to improvise. I took photos of every component with my hand in the picture and we measured my hand and used it as a reference to build VEGGIE in CAD.

Detour 1.0

Taking a moment to check out where each payload is prepped prior to launch.

Detour 2.0

Checking out a retired crawler; originally used for the Apollo, Skylab and Space Shuttle programs from 1966 to 2011.

THE JOURNEY TOGETHER

• Navigating the Needs of Consumers & Astronauts in Parallel •

PROTOTYPE DEVELOPMENT

Re-Inventing Hydroponics & Validating Concepts

Like other projects, the creative process went through multiple rounds of prototyping.

These coincided with rigorous validation tests & committee approvals, which made the creative process unorthodox in that the team had to quickly shift from divergent to convergent thinking.

Right: Function + Material Validation, Below: Quick sketch sessions between tests & approvals.