Duration: 18 months
For long-duration lunar missions, efficient regenerative life support systems are essential to ensure continuous food production and reduce resupply needs. On-site crop production may provide the crew with food, oxygen and pure water. Project URECa introduces a novel approach for sustainable, ISRU-based off-Earth crop cultivation by developing fertilizer strategies from two readily available resources: source-separated urine and regolith. Urine is rich in nitrogen, a critical input for plant cultivation. However, urine lacks essential plant nutrients such as calcium and magnesium and is low on nutrients such as potassium, phosphorus, and sulfur. Processed lunar (or Martian) regolith can supply these nutrients, providing plant fertilizer products to supplement crop cultivation in mineralized human urine through novel nutrient management strategies. This project will profile plant nutrient consumption, supplementation requirements, and management potentials in hydroponic cultivation systems using processed, source-separated urine. Regolith beneficiation and metallurgical techniques will be evaluated and adapted to extract required nutrients from regolith simulant feedstock through selected processing methods and materials. Finally, the resulting fertilizers will be tested in hydroponic leafy green cultivation with customized nutrient management strategies. By advancing beneficiation technologies for targeted nutrient extraction and identifying novel urine/regolith simulant fertilization strategies, this project supports sustainable ISRU and agriculture, repurposing lunar regolith, related ISRU by-products, and urine as nutrient sources, significantly reducing reliance on Earth-supplied resources. Terrestrially, URECa's technology can offer ways to recycle mining by-products to provide plant fertilizers, enrich nutrient-deficient soils, and support sustainable food production through improved waste management and nutrient recycling in greenhouses and vertical farms.
