EDEN ISS - Growing vegetables in the eternal ice: Coming to Antarctica

Neumayer III Station in Antarctica

The EDEN ISS greenhouse, developed by the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR), has been in Antarctica since 2018. It was designed to conduct research into food production in deserts and cold regions, as well as exploring the possibility of growing fresh food in the hostile conditions of the Moon or Mars. Plant scientist Jess Bunchek from NASA's Kennedy Space Center is spending a year in the eternal ice as a DLR guest researcher. In this blog, she will report about her exciting research on Earth's coldest continent.

In a typical year, you can reach the Neumayer III Station in Antarctica by air, but as we all know, the last year has been anything but typical. With countries restricting travellers and flights being cancelled, the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI), which runs Neumayer, came up with an alternative: go by ship. The icebreaker RV Polarstern (German for 'polar star') already travels annually from Germany to Neumayer to resupply the station, so adding a few passengers to this year's transit was a logical and COVID-safe solution for AWI. read more

Studying botany to grow vegetables at the South Pole

 

Although I won't be leaving to Antarctica until December 2017 on my one-year expedition as part of the EDEN ISS project, preparations for it are already under way. Ultimately, I will be responsible for the operation of the EDEN ISS greenhouse in Antarctica, and that includes all the tasks from sowing the plants to harvesting. My gardening skills will determine whether the greenhouse can contribute to the vegetable diet of the crew of the Neumayer III research station and whether all our experiments are successful. That is why I have spent the last week in the Netherlands. There, experts introduced me to the professional cultivation of vegetables in greenhouses. As a trained engineer who never really had green fingers, the trip was absolutely fascinating and very instructive. read more