China's Moon Palace laboratory (Yuegong 1) - testbed for bio-regenerative life support system

06 January 2014
Current research undertaken by a team of scientists at Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics might provide some key answers to one of the problems - that of growing plants in space. At their laboratory, called Yuegong 1, or Moon Palace, the scientists simulated a lunar environment to conduct experiments into the cultivation of plants and micro-organisms in an extraterrestrial environment. The researchers used a limited number of resources; food, water, oxygen, soil, livestock, and, most important, plants with a strong resistance to the types of radiation found in space. "The model (at Yuegong 1) is called a bio-regenerative life support system, otherwise known as a Controlled Ecological Life Support System. Chinese scientists have been working on this project for more than 30 years with the aim of finding plants capable of sustaining their growth cycles through adaptation to a previously unfriendly environment," Li Yinxin, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Botany, said.
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