Water Management
Water is the ultimate limiting factor in the space frontier. Working as Lead Botanists, students soon learn that water is not an unlimited resource as it is thought of on earth but rather a very limited resource to be conserved on the Red Planet. Water on Mars is very rare and chemically complex resource that must be engineered into existence as they design their Martian Farm. This pedagogical journey does not simply prepare students for a mission to Jezero Crater, but it compels a profound reflection on Earth’s own diminishing potable water supply, recontextualizing a terrestrial crisis through an extraterrestrial lens.
One of many big obstacles to Martian agriculture is that most of the surface water exists as polar ice or “brines”, liquid water so saturated with salts and toxic perchlorates that it is not suitable for biological use. To address this, the project looks at how using an advanced two-stage treatment system could work. Students’ model for bio desalination will consist of marine cyanobacteria (Synechococcus sp.) that can reduce salinity by ~32 %. For our exparament gravity filtration through naturally porous basaltic rocks adsorbing inorganic salts will not be necessary as we do not have salt contamination we are simply building organic compounds in the soil.[6]
Also, the mass multiplier or gear ratio of space travel makes it logistically impossible to ship a two-year water supply from Earth. Thus, the Martian habitat needs to create an absolute process to meet a requirement for nearly 100% recycling capability. The closed loop mandate turns the farm into the living machine where every drop is recovered, purified and reused. However, the end goal will be to create an ecosystem in a jar that can do it perpetually after initial production of the water.
A mirror of scarcity that focuses on extreme efficiency is a stark contrast to the water reality here on Earth. Earth is often called the Blue Planet, but less than 1% of all water on Earth is fresh water. We are now facing our own silent crisis with groundwater, which provides 50% of the world’s drinking water, being depleted to unsustainable rates in places such as India, China and Japan also referred to as the Asia-Pacific region. Students learn about the salinization of Earth’s agriculture, what happens when intensive irrigation causes dissolved salts to collect at the surface, stunting plant growth and increasing soil erodibility, and the consequences for the planet. This terrestrial problem is a parallel to the Martian brine challenge, illustrating to students the reality that Mars' “hostile” chemistry is becoming a reality for farmers in water-scarce regions on Earth.
Their project demonstrates that the innovations required for Mars have immediate indirect benefits for Earth. For instance, the MELiSSA (Micro-Ecological Life Support System Alternative) project, designed for space habitats, in collaboration with private industry has already given rise to advanced filtration technology that currently purifies millions of cubic meters of water in towns across the globe today.[7] In a Holistic Management framework students learn to manage an effective water cycle where nothing is lost to evaporation or runoff. They also need to choose crops with a low water uptake/transpiration ratio such as turnips and lettuce, to maximize biomass while minimizing water demand.
When students learn water management is at the heart of their Martian Farm project, it teaches them that no matter where they are standing, in a greenhouse in Jezero Crater or a field in Oklahoma, water is a precious, finite commodity. They solve the puzzles of desalination and recycling on Mars and build the computational thinking and environmental responsibility needed to protect Earth’s own parched landscapes. In the end, the project reaffirms the Earthrise view: the recognition that our home is a seamless whole in which sustainability is not merely a mission objective, but a condition of human survival.
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