Here, that electricity comes from a solar panel. This new alternative to photosynthesis uses electricity to convert carbon dioxide into acetate. Extra tricks along the way boost the process. Then, he uses that CO to make the acetate (C 2H 3O 2 –). First, he uses electricity to take an oxygen atom off of CO 2 to make carbon monoxide (or CO). (Acetate is what gives vinegar its sharp smell.) He developed a two-step process. Jiao figured out how to make acetate from CO 2 some time ago. That, he argues, is a huge benefit of this study. “It comes down to doing things in a sustainable way,” Romeyn says. And the plant food can help grow crops to eat. This new tech not only removes CO 2, but also replaces it with oxygen and plant food. Romeyn says, “Anyone that has a way to use CO 2 efficiently, to do something actually useful with it - that’s pretty awesome.” It can build to unhealthful levels in spacecraft. With every breath they exhale, astronauts release this gas. (The mustard and pak choi have since been grown aboard the International Space Station.) Cory Huston/NASA He grew them in this NASA demonstration unit at Cape Canaveral, Fla., to test whether they might make good crops aboard lunar missions. Matthew Romeyn inspects kale, mustard greens and pak choi. And, he says, too much CO 2 is one problem space travelers will face. His job is to help find better ways to grow plants in space. He does, however, appreciate limits to growing food in space. He’s a NASA plant scientist at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. But that’s not the only problem this new tech could help solve, says Matthew Romeyn. The researchers have focused on the issue of sunlight availability for plants. His team’s paper appears in the June 23 issue of Nature Food. For instance, he offers, “Maybe you’ll have a nuclear reactor” on board a spacecraft that makes it. Even in space, he points out, astronauts will have access to electricity. His team’s new process might even find use on the surface of Mars, he says. That’s why he thinks deep-space exploration is likely the first big application for this. He’s an electrochemist at the University of Delaware in Newark. In space, however, that’s not always the case, explains Feng Jiao. This might not be crucial on Earth where there’s usually plenty of sunlight to grow plants. And unlike photosynthesis, this plant food can be made using plain old electricity. But the plant food it makes is acetate (ASS-eh-tayt), rather than sugar. The light-free process takes in carbon dioxide, or CO 2, and spits out plant food, just as photosynthesis does. Early experiments with lettuce suggest that plants, too, might soon be able to grow using energy sources other than sunlight. So far, the new method works with algae, mushrooms and yeast. Scientists just came up with a hack for growing food in the dark. The lighter-coloured gas surrounding S1 consists of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, a family of carbon-based molecules that are among the most common compounds found in space.No sun? That may not be a problem for future space gardens. The heftiest in this image is the star S1, which appears amid a glowing cave it is carving out with its stellar winds in the lower half of the image. The young stars at the centre of many of these discs are similar in mass to the Sun or smaller. Some stars display the telltale shadow of a circumstellar disc, the makings of future planetary systems. Jets bursting from young stars crisscross the image, impacting the surrounding interstellar gas and lighting up molecular hydrogen, shown in red. It is a relatively small, quiet stellar nursery, but you’d never know it from Webb’s chaotic close-up. The subject is the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex, the closest star-forming region to Earth. The first anniversary image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope displays star birth like it’s never been seen before, full of detailed, impressionistic texture.
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