Concept · Astrobiology
Ceres
A greenhouse that tends itself in orbit. A one-metre greenhouse for space stations. A slowly spinning drum keeps water at the roots, so fresh greens grow with almost no crew time.
The problem
Every meal in orbit is launched from Earth.
2030
The ISS retires.
Commercial stations will have to feed their crews from their own budgets.
2 t
Every meal is launched.
A crew of four eats over two tonnes of food a year, and stored food loses vitamins.
2016
Water won't stay put.
In microgravity it clings to roots in blobs. That year, overwatered zinnias on the ISS went mouldy.
100%
Gardens eat crew time.
Today's orbital gardens are tended entirely by hand.
The design
Spin the garden, not the station.
Just enough gravity for plants to know which way is down.
Specification
One metre. Fresh greens every day.
Engineering estimates, not tested hardware.
- Fresh greens per month
- 5 kg
- Total height
- 1 m
- At the root zone
- 0.1 g
- Size
- 1.0 × 0.55 × 0.55 m
- Launch mass
- 90 kg
- Drum
- Ø 0.46 m × 0.7 m, 0–20 rpm
- Grow area
- 1 m², six cassettes
- Power
- 150 W average, 250 W peak
- Water recovery
- 98%
- Crops
- Leafy greens, herbs, microgreens
- Crew time
- Under 10 min a week
Business model
Sold as a service.
Lease
Operators lease the unit monthly. We carry the hardware risk.
Cartridges
A 35 g seed-and-nutrient cartridge grows about 0.8 kg of greens.
Data
Labs and agritech companies book cassettes for experiments.
Roadmap
Lab bench to orbit.
2027· next
Ground prototype
Full-scale drum, plus parabolic flight tests.
2028
Orbital demo
A single-cassette unit as a hosted payload.
2030
First station unit
On a commercial station, as the ISS retires.
2032+
Scale up
A full-rack model, then a lunar habitat version.
Work with us
Grow food in orbit.
We're looking for partners to take Ceres from concept to prototype.