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Posted on October 22, 2009 by Wilfredo Mullen | Posted under Science
NASA involvement with LED hydroponics
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If you have scoured around the Internet at all lately or kept up with the technology blogs, you will have an absolutely seen articles written about NASA using hydroponics to grow plants hydroponically in space. The idea of being able to grow your own food in space is incredible for what it can offer astronauts on long journeys taking many months or years. For future development missions of Mars, as well as possible development for life on the moon, as well as onboard the international space station. In the near future astronaut farmers will be able to use hydroponics aboard the space station or their space vessels to grow their own food, and not have to be reliant upon earth for refueling of food and nutritional items. The astronauts will be growing their own food with hydroponics in space. This would free up additional spacecraft hulls so that they can bring in other items and not waste valuable cargo space with food when astronauts could be growing their own fresh fruits in space with hydroponics. The LED light is researched by NASA currently because that type of lighting system uses very little electrical power and can be run off of small batteries. This means that this type of LED lighting when used in combination with hydroponics will consume very little battery power and allow many hydroponic systems powered by LED lights to grow a wide variety of fresh produce and vegetables in space or aboard space station with hydroponics. A typical LED light bulb lasts from 8 to 10 years under heavy use and will not have any heat byproduct to deal with, such as normal traditional high pressure sodium or metal halide light bulbs that are commonly used in hydroponics application. The high energy draw and heat put off by these types of high-powered lights would not be a viable option in a aboard a space station or spacecraft. However the LED light can be very effective for plants grown in hydroponics because it LED lights is as bright to the plant as an HPS light is to our eyes. There are companies like Homegrown Hydroponics experimenting with this same type of LED lighting that NASA is using to grow plants hydroponically in space. Homegrown Hydroponics is one of a small amount of grow box manufacturers on the forefront of LED lighting technology in hydroponics of grow box technology. They have utilized powerful LED lights into a machine box machine they sell called Led Cube Grow box. It essentially emulates a 600 W high pressure sodium and a 600 W metal halide light at the same time. The reason LED lights are so effective is because they only put out the exact color spectrum that your plant needs to grow in their various stages. Typical HPS lighting will put out a white light with a red tint that is actually all the colors in the spectrum combined together to look like white light. With LED lights you are only using energy to put out exactly the right amount of light in the right color spectrums for your plants to flourish under LED light alone. You need is typically red and blue light spectrums only. Homegrown hydroponics has managed to build a successful LED grow box using this cutting-edge technology, and is essentially mimicking the same technology that NASA is using for future development of space. A hydroponics grow box makes it possible for anyone in here on earth to grow with the same technology at a fraction of cost and every bit as effective. An interesting read LED lighting and grow boxes if nothing else, take a look at their latest hydroponics videos concerning LED lighting and you'll be amazed at how far this technology has come. About The Author: Wilfredo Mullen Hydroponics Growing http://www.homegrown-hydroponics.com |
Tags: HYDROPONICS, GROW BOX, LED LIGHTING
