ポスト国際宇宙ステーションを牽引する有人宇宙探査とそれを支える宇宙農業構想

摘要

Scope of manned space exploration in post-International Space Station era is discussed with spaceagriculture for habitation on Mars. Space agriculture is a concept of life support system driven bybiological and ecological functions. Water and gas are revitalized by photosynthetic process of plants.Hyper-thermophilic aerobic composting bacterial ecology converts metabolic waste of human and inediblebiomass to fertilizer for plant cultivation. Trees and insects are considered to be implemented in spaceagriculture for supplying excess oxygen, wooden materials, and animal origin foods. Marine macro-algaesolve sodium and potassium problem in space agriculture. Space agriculture does not aim to achieve 100%closure of materials recycle, but utilize on-site resource available on Mars to supplement loss in the loopand expand scale of Martian habitation without importing resource materials from Earth. We areconducting conceptual design and trade candidate subsystems. Strategic plan of development is argued todefine ground based studies, experiment and verification task on orbiting platforms and at Moon base.