The journey to outer space is incredibly dangerous, but crews must also face day-to-day hazards, such as exposure to cancer-causing radiation, microgravity and extreme isolation. Understanding and mitigating these risks may allow astronauts to stay in these environments for extended periods, especially as agencies race to build permanent habitats on the Moon.

This quest was the highlight of this year’s National Academy of Engineering regional meeting, as students, scientists and industry experts gathered to discuss and shape solutions to the logistical challenges of living and working in outer space. The three-day event was held at the Blackwell Inn and Pfahl Conference Center at The Ohio State University. 

One of the conference’s keynote speakers was Scott Parazynski, a physician and former NASA astronaut who once flew with John Glenn, who spoke about anticipating and preparing for health issues in space. Such concerns range from how astronauts will treat medical emergencies and mental health conditions to ensuring long-term pharmaceutical availability. 

“Space is actually harder on the body than you might think,” said Parazynski.

Despite the extensive health checks astronauts must undergo before liftoff, instances of illness and injury in space are still common occurrences. Prolonged stays in space can cause long-term issues like cardiovascular strain, sleeplessness, hypoxia (low oxygen) and reduced musculoskeletal fitness. Earlier this year, one astronaut even experienced a health scare that led to the first-ever medical evacuation from the International Space Station. 

But in situations where it isn’t possible to return to Earth quickly, crews will need to be able to handle emergency situations on their own, including having to perform space surgeries or provide care for other spaceflight-induced traumas. 

This means that advanced tools and systems will be vital to overcoming the challenges astronauts will face once off-world. “In exploration, when we challenge ourselves to go to extreme environments, we inevitably have to invent technologies not only to make it safe to go do that,” said Parazynski, “but also to extract science and do meaningful work.”

Polishing up novel technologies for future space missions could also lead to big improvements in medical systems here on Earth. “Investments in space health help us in remote parts of our world, in disaster recovery, and so many other facets of health care,” said Parazynski. 

Other topics addressed during the meeting revealed insights regarding Earth observation – or how scientists are monitoring our planet from above, what drives materials and manufacturing in space, and how researchers are finding new pathways to lunar exploration.

In another panel, Karen Dannemiller, an associate professor of civil, environmental and geodetic engineering and environmental health sciences at Ohio State, detailed some of the engineering challenges behind preserving astronaut health, and spoke about the importance of identifying issues like microbial threats in the environment as quickly as possible. 

“None of us thinks too much about indoor environmental quality until it’s an emergency,” said Dannemiller. “But traveling to the moon or to Mars, we don’t have the luxury to wait until then.” Instead, early detection and addressing issues before they become unmanageable are staples of sustainable innovations that can collectively support human health, she said. 

She and other panelists also shared advice on how next-generation scientists and academic leaders ought to seek out new research solutions to modern-era spaceflight obstacles.

“Follow your passions wherever that may lead,” said Dannemiller. “Don’t be afraid of failure.”

Using a special laser 3D printing method, researchers melted fake lunar soil – a synthetic version of the fine dusty material on the moon surface, called regolith simulant – into layers and fused it with a base surface to manufacture small, heat-resistant objects. 

If utilized on the lunar surface, the material may help build sturdy, nontoxic habitats and tools for future astronauts, capabilities that would be vital to the NASA Artemis missions that aim to establish a long-term human presence on the moon by the end of the decade.

But to assess how well this new construction material may work in space, the team tested their fabrication process under a range of different environmental conditions, revealing that the overall quality of the material depends greatly on the surface onto which the soil is printed.  

“By combining different feedstocks, like metal and ceramics, in the printing process, we found that the final material is really sensitive to the environment,” said Sizhe Xu, lead author of the study and a graduate research associate in industrial systems engineering at The Ohio State University. “Different environments lead to different properties, which directly affect the mechanical strength and the thermal shock resistance of certain components.”

The study was recently published in the journal Acta Astronautica.

There are two types of lunar regolith simulants that scientists use to study the surface of the moon. The one this team used, called LHS-1, is designed to replicate soil found in the lunar highlands, a heavily cratered area rife with dark-colored basaltic rock. 

In this case, researchers discovered that while trying to print LHS-1 on stainless steel and glass surfaces was challenging, it adhered well to alumina-silicate ceramic, likely because the two compounds form crystals that enhance thermal stability and mechanical strength. 

Other environmental factors, such as the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere, the strength of the laser and even the speed of the printing process, were also shown to impact the stability of the structure, said Sarah Wolff, senior author of the study and an assistant professor in mechanical and aerospace engineering at Ohio State.

“There are conditions that happen in space that are really hard to emulate in a simulant,” she said. “It may work in the lab, but in a resource-scarce environment, you have to try everything to maximize the flexibility of a machine for different scenarios.”

Unsurprisingly, developing special systems for prolonged space travel is one of the most challenging aspects of successful human exploration, as technologies created for In-Situ Resource Utilization, or the harnessing of local natural resources at mission destinations, must be engineered to survive extreme vacuum, dust and thermal environmental conditions.

To accomplish this, scientists are rapidly evolving additive manufacturing systems, which would help reduce the need to transport large quantities of materials and heavy equipment from Earth and enable astronauts to create an array of structures, tools and habitats. 

The promise of these technologies would not only save essential mission time but also allow for extended independence as crews travel into deep space. 

Still, more data is needed to overcome any potential limitations future travelers might face as they lift off for other worlds. This study, for example, suggests that instead of being powered by electricity as their printing system is on Earth, future designs of the system could likely be scaled up using solar-driven or other hybrid power architectures. 

“There are so many applications that we’re working toward that with new information, the possibilities are endless,” said Xu. 

This team’s work also extends beyond supporting humanity’s push to the stars, as gaining a better sense of how manufacturing might work in space could help researchers discover new ways to address critical material shortages back home, said Wolff. 

“If we can successfully manufacture things in space using very few resources, that means we can also achieve better sustainability on Earth,” she said. “To that end, improving the machine’s flexibility for different scenarios is a goal we’re working really hard toward.”

Other Ohio State co-authors include Marwan Haddad, Aslan Bafahm Alamdari, Annabel Shim and Alan Luo. 

The study was supported by Ohio State’s Institute for Materials and Manufacturing Research and the Center for Electron Microscopy and Analysis. 

By John M. Horack,

Vice President for Research and Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering,
The Ohio State University

Leading these advances are researchers at The Ohio State University: Engineers are developing a nuclear propulsion system that uses liquid uranium to directly heat rocket propellant as an alternative to solid fuel elements used by traditional nuclear propulsion systems.  

Their concept, called the centrifugal nuclear thermal rocket (CNTR), is specially designed to improve rocket performance while simultaneously minimizing any engine risk.  

While similar breakthroughs in the field have focused more on affordability than performance, CNTR potentially offers a substantial advantage for future crewed space missions even compared to other types of nuclear-powered systems in that it can approximately double an engine’s efficiency, said Dean Wang, a senior member of the project and an associate professor in mechanical and aerospace engineering at Ohio State. 

“In recent years, there has been quite an increased interest in nuclear thermal propulsion technology as we contemplate returning humans to the moon and working in cis-lunar space,” said Wang. “But beyond it, a new system is needed, as traditional chemical engines may not be feasible.” 

Chemical engines have been used in spaceflight since the very beginning of the space age.  However, they are limited in thrust, and use large quantities of propellant. Consequently, missions to the outer reaches of the solar system can take a very long time – nine years in the case of the New Horizons spacecraft that flew by Pluto.  

Because of these limitations, future missions will require propulsion systems that can reduce travel time, increase the amount of material sent on the mission, or both, if researchers want to safely send astronauts to far-off destinations — all vital reasons why demonstrating the potential of these approaches is so important, said Wang.  

“The longer you are in space, the more susceptible you are to all types of health risks,” he said. “So if we can make that any shorter, it’d be very beneficial.”  

If the team’s design is successful, implementing their engine in future rockets could make it easier to travel farther on less fuel, as the highest specific impulse — the amount of thrust achievable from a specific amount of propellant — of a chemical engine is about 450 seconds.  Nuclear propulsion engines based on designs tested in the 1960s achieved approximately 900 seconds and, according to the team, a CNTR could achieve even higher values. 

Utilizing nuclear thermal propulsion would also mean more flexibility for mission operations, as rockets could take advantage of additional flight trajectories not possible with chemical engines,  to help reach deep-space targets in shorter periods of time. More notably, because these systems can utilize a range of potential substances as propellant, widespread use could quickly facilitate the development of in-space resources such as asteroids and Kuiper Belt objects, said Wang.  

Overall, these heightened capabilities could allow quicker round-trip human missions to Mars as well as support novel one-way robotic missions to the outer planets, including Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, said Spencer Christian, a PhD student in engineering at Ohio State. Under John Horack, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Ohio State, Christian leads prototype construction of CNTR.  

“You could have a safe one-way trip to Mars in six months, for example, as opposed to doing the same mission in a year,” said Christian. “Depending on how well it works, the prototype CNTR engine is pushing us towards the future.” 

Despite these newfound avenues for increased space exploration, like with any emerging innovation, there are many engineering challenges that still have to be addressed, said Wang.  

“We have a very good understanding of the physics of our design, but there are still technical challenges that we need to overcome,” he said.  

Many of these challenges were detailed in a study the team recently published in the journal Acta Astronautica. Some potential hurdles include ensuring that the methods used for startup, operation and shutdown avoid instabilities as well as envisioning ways to minimize the loss of uranium fuel and accommodate potential engine failures. 

This team’s CNTR concept is expected to reach design readiness within the next five years — but in preparing their model for potential next-generation use, researchers are most looking forward to showing how well it could fare under extreme conditions.  

After all, a final laboratory demonstration will likely help inform the direction of future nuclear thermal propulsion technologies. “We need to keep space nuclear propulsion as a consistent priority in the future, so that technology can have time to mature,” said Wang. “It’s a huge benefit that we can’t afford to miss out on.”  

The team’s effort was supported by a grant provided by NASA.

Gathered in support of future human activities in space, students, professionals and researchers from numerous industries assembled in April for the third annual Workshop for Research in Low-Earth Orbit, hosted by The Ohio State University.  

Presented by Starlab Space Inc. and the Mitsubishi Corporation, the two-day event involved scientific talks and panels aimed at preserving and advancing research in low-Earth orbit (LEO), an orbital plane relatively close to the planet’s surface. Many satellites, including the International Space Station and the Hubble Space Telescope, operate at this altitude.  

Due to the weightlessness of this unique environment, there are major benefits to doing research in microgravity. Because removing Earth’s gravity from the equation may reveal new insights about forces on the ground, scientists can use space as a test bed to investigate and study new phenomena and processes. Experiments conducted in LEO have led to the development of next-generation materials across a multitude of fields, including communications, defense, medicine and green energy.  

“Low-Earth orbit is going to push us in terms of our design capability,” said Kate Rubins, a former NASA astronaut, during a speech where she offered new perspectives of life aboard the ISS and recounted how she became the first person to sequence DNA in space. “Thinking about all these things that we’re going to design anyway for spaceflight hardware, that’s going to make this perfect equipment to take to other places on Earth.” 

During the workshop, panelists showcased their vision for the growing commercial space industry by sharing emerging technologies best suited to support human space exploration. Discussion topics ranged from devices next-gen travelers might use to enhance space station living to gadgets for astronaut health monitoring and advances that will help scientists refine future space food systems.  

Marta Nowak, a professor of architecture at Ohio State, presented student-devised ideas for addressing spaceflight habitability issues, or how astronauts interact with the spaces and objects within their built environment. Some proposals suggested specialized sleep and storage modules for work, while another recommended using furniture as an exercise component to help astronauts maintain their health.  

“The International Space Station, after more than 25 years in orbit, has proven humans can survive in space, but thriving remains elusive,” said Nowak. “NASA recognized early that improving astronauts’ quality of life would lead to better mission outcomes.”  

A one-size-fits-all approach to designing comfortable and accessible habitats won’t work to keep people connected in such confined spaces, so adapting custom living solutions for future micro-environments will be vital for successful space exploration, said Nowak.  

In advance of the many challenges NASA is likely to face over the next few decades of long-duration space exploration, speakers emphasized the need for more human-centered development in commercial research as well. “There is nothing in these [commercial] LEO stations that we are not going to need on the way to the moon or Mars,” Rubins said.  

Most notably, tech-heavy portions of the event focused on Starlab’s forthcoming research facilities, an upcoming commercial space station which, in collaboration with Ohio State’s George Washington Carver Science Park (GWCSP), promises to create essential infrastructure to prioritize scientific discovery for both astronauts in space and those of us at home. 

“Our job is to reinvent how we assist the modern world and the people in it,” said John Horack, Neil Armstrong Chair in aerospace policy at Ohio State and one of the co-hosts of the event. “That link starts with knowledge gained through research and education.” 

The event concluded with an announcement of the winner of the GWCSP Innovation Pitch Competition, a contest that invited space startups to present creative ideas on how to harness LEO for advanced scientific goals.  

Of the three team finalists, Spaero Systems, a group that includes Ohio State students Ian Harris and Nikolas Harris, placed first and received the top prize of $5,000.  

A group of College of Engineering senior capstone students and faculty at The Ohio State University, along with a team of NASA engineers, are developing an alternative – a robotic laser welding machine that can manufacture and join materials in space. The research project is funded by the Ohio Federal Research Network which is managed by Parallax Advanced Research.  

However, to accurately test the machine, their research would have to go to new heights, literally.  

During the first week of classes this semester, Ohio State’s LUNAR Weld team traveled to Santa Maria, California, to test the machine’s capability in microgravity through parabolic flight, in which an aircraft flies up and down at 45-degree angles to reproduce gravity-free conditions. 

Those brief weightless moments simulated a space environment in which the team was able to conduct a series of tests on several materials commonly found in spacecraft: aluminum, titanium and stainless steel.  

The collaboration began in 2021, when NASA reached out to Welding Engineering Professors Antonio Ramirez and Boyd Panton to begin development on this groundbreaking technology.  

“We started with five capstone students and an old vacuum chamber loaned to us from NASA Langley,” said Ramirez. “This has been one of the most rewarding projects of my career. These [students] are the people who will develop the technology to make robotic laser welding in space possible.” 

Eugene Choi was one of the students on the first capstone team as an undergraduate in 2021. He is continuing to work on the project while pursuing a PhD in welding engineering.  

“This is a very big project, and we couldn’t have done it with just one or two people. We needed people from different majors, such as electrical, mechanical and material sciences engineering,” said Choi. “Everyone coming together and making this work has been pretty amazing – if we didn’t have any one of them, we wouldn’t have been able to do this.”

The complete Ohio State student team to make the trip were Choi, fellow welding engineering graduate students Aaron Brimmer and Will McAuley, senior mechanical engineering student Grant Smith, and recent electrical and computer science engineering graduate Sarah Huetter. 

Together, the team worked countless hours leading up to the trip to make additions to the machine’s hardware and software in preparation for flight, along with meeting with NASA engineers multiple times a week to provide updates. 

“The collaboration on this project has been amazing – one second you’re a college student, and another you’re working on something incredibly important for NASA,” said Huetter. “I really liked how we all had our own specializations within the project.”  

After two separate flights consisting of 70 parabolas, the team was able to conduct 69 successful tests, producing valuable samples and data for further analysis.  

“The fact these parabolic flights went near perfectly was by far one of the most rewarding, and relieving, moments of my life,” said Brimmer. “With this first flight under our belt, I’m eagerly looking forward to more opportunities to work with our many collaborators on more parabolic flights.” 

Now, the group is back at Ohio State’s Starlab-George Washington Carver Science Park Payload and Analog Research Facility (PARF), analyzing the data and preparing for more parabolic flights to advance this critical technology. 

Researchers created a predictive approach for modeling unintended microbial growth in critical spaces and applied it to life on the International Space Station.  

An analysis of dust samples obtained from the space station found that repeated elevated humidity exposures for even a short time can lead to rapid microbial growth and composition changes in dust that make it easier for microbes, such as fungi, to thrive.  

The study provides important insight into how healthy environments might be maintained during future missions, especially as the commercial space industry begins to prompt more people to live and work above Earth, said Karen Dannemiller, senior author of the study and an associate professor of civil, environmental and geodetic engineering and environmental health sciences at The Ohio State University.  

“It’s really important to understand the exposures that happen in the space environment in part because we see immune system changes in astronauts,” she said. “People who are normally healthy individuals may be especially vulnerable to microbes in space,  more so than on Earth.” 

The study was published today in the journal Microbiome.  

Historically, many spacecraft have had issues with unintended microbial growth because, much like a typical home on Earth, they, too, are environments that tend to trap the moisture humans emit. On the ISS, dust is usually produced by people as they go about their daily activities, but left unchecked, these floating particles can cause a range of negative health issues for the crew, such as asthma or allergies, and degrade building materials and equipment.  

To ensure that dust levels aboard the ISS are carefully controlled, every week astronauts must clean the protective screens that cover the filters of the space station’s air ventilation system. In this study, four separate vacuum bag samples of the dust collected from these housekeeping chores were sent down to Dannemiller’s team to be tested.  

After incubating the samples for two weeks at different relative humidities to simulate a scenario where an unexpected event, such as a temporary air ventilation system failure, could cause bursts of moisture, analysis revealed that fungi and bacteria can grow in the same concentrated amounts as dust collected from residential homes on the ground.  

“Spacecraft actually aren’t that different from what we see on Earth in terms of having a unique indoor microbiome,” said Nicholas Nastasi, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral researcher at Ohio State’s Indoor Environmental Quality Laboratory. “If you put people in a space, there will always be microbes there, so it’s important to prevent their spread because once it starts, it’s often not too easy to get rid of.”  

Spacecraft are especially prone to microbial growth because they are enclosed environments where humans constantly exhale moisture. If that moisture builds up, mold can begin to grow, as seen in past space stations such as Mir. Although the ISS has much improved controls for moisture, unexpected situations can still easily occur, said Nastasi.  

Additionally, while Earth and space environments are complex in their own unique ways, the two more often than not contain similar core microbial communities, Nastasi said. Moreover, staying knowledgeable about the evolution of these communities will make certain that vulnerable individuals both on- and off-world have the information needed to maintain a healthy indoor microbiome on the space station.  

“In designing some of our current space station systems, we’ve already learned a lot of really important lessons in terms of how to keep moisture under control,” said Dannemiller. “Now we’re learning even more that we can use to advance these systems in the future.” 

In general, the study also suggests that the team’s research could later aid the development of planetary protection protocols aimed at preventing contamination of Earth or any other celestial bodies humans may visit.  

Next, the team will likely work to discover what effect other untested spaceflight variables, such as microgravity, radiation and elevated carbon dioxide levels, have on microbial growth in similar working space stations, like NASA’s lunar station Gateway or other imminent commercial projects. Many of their upcoming projects will also benefit from Ohio State’s terrestrial analog of the George Washington Carver Science Park, a replica of Starlab space station science park that will allow researchers to conduct parallel missions on the ground.  

“There’s a lot of other unique spaceflight factors we can potentially add to these microbial models to make them more accurate and useful,” said Nastasi. “We’ll keep refining what we do to maintain those healthy space environments and having unprecedented access to a platform such as Starlab will help immensely.” 

This study was supported by NASA. Other Ohio State co-authors were Ashleigh Bope, Marit E. Meyer and John M. Horack. 

Using the sun as a baseline, astronomers can measure when a star formed by determining its metallicity, or the level of heavy elements present within it. Metal-rich stars or nebulas formed relatively recently, while metal-poor objects were likely present during the early universe. 

Previous studies found a weak connection between metallicity rates and planet formation, noting that as a star’s metallicity goes down, so, too, does planet formation for certain planet populations, like sub-Saturns or sub-Neptunes.

Yet this work is the first to observe that under current theories, the formation of super-Earths near metal-poor stars becomes significantly more difficult, suggesting a strict cut-off for the conditions needed for one to form, said lead author Kiersten Boley, who recently received a PhD in astronomy at The Ohio State University.

“When stars cycle through life, they enrich the surrounding space until you have enough metals or iron to form planets,” said Boley. “But even for stars with lower metallicities, it was widely thought that the number of planets it could form would never reach zero.”

Other studies posited that planet formation in the Milky Way should begin when stars fall between negative 2.5 to negative 0.5 metallicity, but until now, that theory was left unproven. 

To test this prediction, the team developed and then searched a catalog of 10,000 of the most metal-poor stars observed by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission. If correct, extrapolating known trends to search for small, short-period planets around one region of 85,000 metal-poor stars would have led them to discover about 68 super-Earths. 

Surprisingly, researchers in this work detected none, said Boley. “We essentially found a cliff where we expected to see a slow or a gradual slope that keeps going,” she said. “The expected occurrence rates do not match up at all.”

The study was published in The Astronomical Journal.

This cliff, which provides scientists with a time frame during which metallicity was too low for planets to form, extends to about half the age of the universe, meaning that super-Earths did not form early in its history. “Seven billion years ago is probably the sweet spot where we begin to see a decent bit of super-Earth formation,” Boley said. 

Moreover, as the majority of stars formed before that era have low metallicities and would have needed to wait until the Milky Way had been enriched by generations of dying stars to create the right conditions for planet formation, the results successfully propose an upper limit on the number and distribution of small planets in our galaxy.

“In a similar stellar type as our sample, we now know not to expect planet formation to be abundant once you pass a negative 0.5 metallicity region,” said Boley. “That’s kind of striking because we actually have data to show that now.”

What’s also striking is the study’s implications for those searching for life beyond Earth, as having a more precise grasp on the intricacies of planet formation can supply scientists with detailed knowledge about where in the universe life might have flourished. 

“You don’t want to search areas where life wouldn’t be conducive or in areas where you don’t even think you’re going to find a planet,” Boley said. “There’s just a plethora of questions that you can ask if you know these things.” 

Such inquiries could include determining if these exoplanets hold water, the size of their core, and if they’ve developed a strong magnetic field, all conditions conducive for generating life.  

To apply their work to other types of planet formation processes, the team will likely need to study different types of super-Earths for longer periods than they can today. Fortunately, future observations could be attained with the help of upcoming projects like NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and the European Space Agency’s PLATO mission, both of which will widen the search for terrestrial planets in habitable zones like our own. 

“Those instruments will be really vital in terms of figuring out how many planets are out there and getting as many follow-up observations as we can,” said Boley. 

Other co-authors include Ji Wang from Ohio State; Jessie Christiansen, Philip Hopkins and Jon Zink from The California Institute of Technology; Kevin Hardegree-Ullman and Galen Bergsten from The University of Arizona; Eve Lee from McGill University; Rachel Fernandes from The Pennsylvania State University; and Sakhee Bhure from the University of Southern Queensland. This study was supported by the National Science Foundation and NASA. 

For one, no one can deliver takeout to the International Space Station. Likewise, because space food needs to be safe and nutritious, and last for at least five years, most of the fare onboard tends to be freeze-dried or packaged in disposable containers. 

Efforts to improve current food production systems so astronauts might have both nutritious and delicious menu choices was the focus of NASA’s Deep Space Food Challenge, the third and final phase of which was co-hosted by The Ohio State University. 

In 2019, NASA and the CSA (Canadian Space Agency) started the Deep Space Food Challenge, a multi-year international effort to develop sustainable food systems for long-duration habitation in space, including on the moon and Mars. Since Phase 1 of the challenge opened in 2021, more than 300 teams from 32 countries have developed innovative food system designs. On Aug. 16, NASA announced the final Phase 3 winners at Ohio State.

Presented at the Nationwide & Ohio Farm Bureau 4-H Center, the two-day event featured panel discussions with students, scientists and government representatives involved in developing sustainable food systems for long-duration human exploration, as the current system space agencies employ likely wouldn’t work well for extended planetary missions.  

“Food is the limiting factor for human spaceflight,” said Tor Blomqvist, a food researcher at the German Aerospace Center, during a dialogue on fostering collaborative relationships between government entities and commercial space companies. “Before we can have a continuous human presence on the lunar surface, we need to figure out a way to increase food production in space, especially if we want to reduce our dependencies on Earth as much as possible.”

Space food systems are required to carry out a variety of onboard processes. This includes being able to store food in areas with limited space and ensuring safe food preparation, as well as establishing a method to eliminate all the waste the process of cooking creates. Eating in microgravity can be difficult while adhering to the balanced diet astronauts must meet, but because food can play a critical role in the crew’s psychological well-being, like affecting their mood and morale, the future of space exploration is as intimately tied to the type of food we pack on the trip as it is to advances in cutting-edge rocketry.

“We’re going to need a roadmap for the food systems we’re trying to achieve and this is something that national space agencies can’t do themselves,” said Blomqvist. The solution, he said, is to inspire cooperation between the private and public sectors. 

Ohio State has already cemented its connection to the rising commercial space industry through the establishment of the George Washington Carver Science Park (GWCSP) in cooperation with Voyager Space Holdings.

Located at the north side of The Ohio State University Airport, the GWCSP will serve as an ecosystem to fortify commercial spaceflight research, technology, and economic development in low-Earth orbit. The park will also include terrestrial analogs of research and facilities aboard the upcoming commercial space station Starlab, said John Horack, Neil Armstrong Chair in aerospace policy at Ohio State and a key organizer of the event.

The ground-based research and development conducted there will help establish sustainable exploration beyond Earth by developing manufacturing technologies that inform space constructions, addressing novel ways to keep astronauts healthy and safe via closed-loop life support systems, and studying unique agricultural challenges. 

“Carver’s work was about creating new knowledge and research that would impact the largest number of people in the most profound way possible, so that their lives could be improved,” said Horack. “This anchor site will strive to do the same.”

The conclusion of the Deep Space Food Challenge, which is also geared toward helping Earth’s food scarcity issues, also featured demonstrations from The Ohio State University Simunauts, a group of current and former College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences students who worked alongside NASA to operate the novel technologies being presented. Of the four teams who competed to win a prize purse of $1 million, Interstellar Lab received $750,000, while the two semi-finalists Nolux and SATED received an award of $250,000 each. 

“Congratulations to not only the winner of the Deep Space Food Challenge, but to all those companies whose products and technologies will help us not only to feed astronauts in deep space but use our research in space to feed people here on Earth,” said Horack.