Bugs and potatoes

Hello, everyone!
If you have been following our facebook page you might remember that we have been experimenting with growing potatoes in various kind of soil. So far it seems that all of the plants are doing great. (There is also some oat growing next to our potatoes. We'll use it to feed the insects we are growing for our experiments.)

A few days ago we received a gift package from our awesome sponsors in Entocube.
What did it contain?
Well, I'll give you a hint. It has lots of legs and it's a great protein source for astronauts.

Now we can test the gas exchange between plants and insects in real life! We are also starting one longer experiment to find out what these insects want to eat the most. Hopefully they find the potatoes as tasty as humans do.
Have a great day!

Five things I've learned during Epic Challenge

Hello, everyone!

This time I'm going to post something different from usual.
My name is Sonja and I've been updating the blog together with Krista, another one of our team members. I'm one of the two high school students in our team. Since we will give a presentation to American high school students regarding our project next week, I feel it could be a good time to share with you a few lessons I've learned myself during the Epic Challenge.

5. Anyone can learn anything if they try hard enough

I have never concidered myself to be very good at biology, chemistry or mathematics. They have always been the most interesting yet most challenging subjects for me to learn in school. In the beginning of last autumn I had no idea what a hydrophonic system was or how the gravity of a planet affects how the plants grow there. During this project I have had to learn about those and dozens of more subjects and suprisingly there hasn't been anything I couldn't have been able to understand. I have learned tons of stuff from our teachers, the NASA experts, the other team members and just by searching for the information. It's amazing how much you can learn if you are invested enough!

4. Good teamwork requires flexibility

One of the main things I've noticed during this year is that not everything goes according to plan. People have lives outside the project and not everyone can always give their all. There is no point in blaming others when timetables don't hold and deadlines lurk behind the corner. You can only accept the siyuation and try to make the best out of it.

3. Managing your own time is vital

I have always had the bad habit of doing everything just before the deadline. Unfortunately that doesn't work when you are a part of a team with little time in thei hands and lots of work to do. Dividing tasks and planning your work really makes everything easier.

2. Keeping an open mind brings pleasant suprises

Insects taste good.
This is one of the more suprising things I've noticed during this project. Before I would have never even concidered putting a squirming, nasty bug in my mouth. Now I can proudly state that grasshoppers with garlic is one of the best things I've ever tasted!
Science is the research of the world around us and one who wants to discover the mysteries of the universe should be able to put their prejustices aside and try new things once in a while.

1. Nothing is impossible

A Finnish high school student working with NASA and innovating technology to habitate Mars with? That sounds absurd, but for me, Netta and our classmates from Red Sandbox that is pretty much our everyday life.
Cooking insects for food and calling to an international space station? Been there, done that.
The Epic Challenge project has taught me many things but perhaps the most important one is this - you can never know what opportunities the life brings to you and it is impossible to determine the circumstances you'll face in the future, but when you have a chance to do something valuable and learn new things, you should take it and try your hardest to make everything you can out of it. Only by taking a leap of faith and testing your own limits you can achieve something truly epic.

Potatoes in Mars?

Hi, everybody!
It's almost spring here in Joensuu and we are eagerly waiting to see this year's first flowers to bloom.
In the meantime we decided to do some plant-growing of our own - our newest concept includes potatoes, oat and barley. If all goes well, astronauts in Mars might be able to enjoy a
Currently we are testing which one is the best, good old regular soil or an artificial growing environment.
We haven't forgotten about the insects either. Earlier we tried to find the best way to make food out of insects but now we are trying to make food for them. The plants we chose are supposed to feed bugs along with astronauts.
What do you think, do grasshoppers prefer mashed potatoes or porrige?

6.3. Insect-survey results

Hello again!

Thank you for everyone, who answered in our first survey (about eating insects)! During the Marsraiser-event last Monday we asked some new survey-questions, with the opportunity to taste actual insects in different forms. 

We prepared crickets (sposored by EntoCube), in both chili and garlic and herbs. The brave tasters were surprised in a good way, many referred to the crickets to remind them of just snacks like chips or similar. 

We also baked some nice cookies, with cricket-powder, ants and worms. So nice to see people open up to new experiences without too much hesitation. Hopefully the astronauts will be as open-minded to the idea!

Some data-analysis of the FIRST SURVEY showed us that (with over 300 answers):

• 72 % of the people would be willing to taste insects (positive or indifferent)
• Top 4 of preferred insects were grasshoppers, ants, worms and beetles. Not many would be willing to eat spiders, wonder why?
• Taste is the main attribute, when people are deciding what to eat. Health effects come second.

During Marsraiser, in the SECOND SURVEY, we found that (with 28 answers):

• People were more positive about eating insects, after they tasted them during Marsraiser (when asked both beforehand, and after tasting). Positive feelings grew 24,7 percentage points, while negative feelings decreased 10,7 percentage points.
• People were also open to take insects into their daily diet, once they tasted them. 
• Total of 92.6% was feeling positive after tasting.
• 74% was willing to eat insects as a part of their daily diet

When looking at our survey-results, you have to keep in mind that the aims were different. In the first survey we wanted to find out peoples over-all attitudes towards insects as food, and in the second we were studying how does actually eating the insects affect those prejudices (or if it doesn't affect anything). 

(More information on analytics with graphics you can check HERE. )

 Few pictures of our epic cooking:

Here we have about 300 pieces of delicious food just waiting to be prepared.

First we of course killed the crickets, as humanely as possible, and then boiled them for a few minutes, and let them dry out. Then we divided them into two groups, one waiting to be fried with garlic and herbs, and the other with chili and lime.

The outcome was very nice! Just waiting for this to become a socially accepted in the western cultures too!

Until next time, and please comment, would you eat insects instead of/ with your regular diet?

29.2. The Marsraiser!

Thank you for the Marsraiser!

Thank you to everyone who was interested in hearing about our Epic Challenges, and was brave enough to try insect-food, drive the miniature Mars-rover, or take a look at Mars landscapes with virtual reality. What a special way to spend the leap day of 2016, you taking a leap toward us and us taking a step in reaching our goals.

Krista from bioMARS giving our pitch talk to visitors.

Many were eager to try out our insect-cookies, which had crickets, ants, and some of them had worms.

We also prepared some fried crickets, with chili, and with garlic. Very tasty!

Here are the suspicious faces of bioMARS' Mariia and Kristina, but they had the courage to try some as well!

Everyone at Marsraiser were lucky enough to take the miniature Mars-Rover for a spin.

Here is Olli presenting the Oculus Rift, where we could see a Martian landscape!

Our Epic teams wish to thank everyone who contributed to the event!

Sincerely, bioMARS

Team Red Sandbox

(Isn't it just the worst when you show up at a party and someone's wearing the same thing as you? ;) )

22.2. Call to Tim Kopra

Hello y'all, and with interesting news!

We got to make an arranged video-call to the ISS, and to talk with astronaut Tim Kopra. Arcusys was kind to host the event here in Joensuu. Afterwards some local media interviewed us, and you can check some material here (interview in Finnish only, but Mr. Kopras introduction video is in english).

We cannot say what information was exchanged exactly, but we had prepared some questions alongside Team Red Sandbox about our unique challenges, and asked Kopra for his insight on the matters. His experiences and knowledge of the realities about space-travelling will help us develop our concepts. Not to mention how huge of a privilege it was just to be present at such a call.

Did you know Mr. Kopra is Finnish-American? He is very respectable for his accomplishments in both the US army, and as an astronaut. You can read more about his career HERE.

Thank you for all your support! Next week we have all new exciting news, so stay tuned!

Here we have a picture of some of bioMARS' and Team Red Sandbox' members waiting for the call to start.

There's always more to find out!

Hello, everyone!
First of all I want to thank everyone who filled out our insect-eating survey! Now we have plenty of data to analyze and use in our future concepts. We are also glad that so many of the participants are willing to try out actually eating some insects. Now the only thing we need to do is to find some nice grasshopper cookie recipies...
This week we started doing more experiments. Because we have so much to find out and only a finite amount of time we split the group into three sub-teams.
I won't tell precise details about these experiments yet but I can tell you we need an air-tight cabinet, fly maggots and some basil saplings. Sounds fun, right?
The other sub-teams' stuff is so secret even we don't know much about it. (Or then we were just too busy with our own plans to ask them. Who knows?) Hopefully things will clarify over the next week.
I hope you all have a wonderful day!

1.2. Survey for you!

Hello, our dear readers!

We, bioMARTIANS, are thinking about including insects in the Mars-habitat menú, and built up a survey about that. Would you be ready to try food made of insects?

If you'd like, please answer our little survey HERE (Link opens Google Docs)
If you're located in the Finland, Joensuu -area, you might get a chance of actually eating insects.

Thank You so much for contributing to science! ;)

20.1. T(eam)-shirts are here!

Hey everyone!

We are tributing our (so far) successful journey to science with our official T-shirts, and as January has boosted us to experiment designs, and more detailed concepts, it's nice to be identified as a team, rather than just individuals.

We are bioMARS!

Currently we're comparing different types of systems used to grow food, and figuring the best concepts from our own ideas.

We're investigating the wide web for people who've done it before us, so feel free to leave us a link to an experiment on food-growing, if you know some! :)

2016: Back to business!

Hey!
Tonight was our first official meeting of 2016, and now that we're roughly halfway through our time of the Epic Challenge Joensuu (we're scheduled to finnish in May), we will begin experimenting with our selected concepts for food growing units, and prototyping!

As we have come up with more than a hundred concepts, now each team member will try to make a testing experiment of two promising concepts, and provide the rest of the team with information on those concepts, so it will come easier to get rid of bad concepts.

Our journey has concentrated more on theory up till now, but things are about to get more exciting once the prototyping phase begins! Thanks for following us also on Facebook!

Until next time!

16.12. One hundred concepts?!

HEY, tonight we tried to categorise and choose good concepts from ~100 different ones. That's not too easy, but you know what, we're not stupid either. 

We will continue our evaluating process, and choose the best combinations from everyones ideas, which we can prototype and develop even further in 2016. 

However, tonight was the last official meeting of 2015, so it's individual work for the rest of the year. We will still post some holiday cheers in here, and in our Facebook!

Thanks, bye for now! :) 

Pre-Christmas party Bowling!

Hey, and happy early Christmas to us! 

BioMARS and Team Red Sandbox teamed up and went bowling together, to a local bowling bar called "Cosmic" (Get it? Working with NASA? Mars? Cosmic?). It's important to relax between working on a difficult challenge and studying hard, and what better way than with the great people you also work with?

Our bowlers were prepared for the black light, which made white clothes glow!

Hely, Kristina, and Ana making the pins scared for their lives :)

Perhaps Joni is giving Maria some tips? :)

There were no winners or losers, but we all had a great time! Thank you, Team Red Sandbox, let's not let this be the last time :)

9.12. Concepts here, concepts there

Hey!

So we've been individually coming up with greenhouse/ food growing concepts for the past week, and used yesterday to sharing our concept-ideas. Then we decided to check out a few of those more deeply, and used the Triz40-website and 39 parameters related to that. 

It all seemed quite complex at first, but once we tried it, it started to make sense, and it's a great way to develop our concepts further. Next time we'll have even more concepts to develop. 

Work in progress:

Until next time, dear readers!

Interviewed for the internet

Hello, a brief announcement;

Karelia UAS second year students interviewed one of our team member, Maria, about our project.

Check our the video interview HERE.

(The site is in finnish, the interview is partly in english/finnish)

Also, remember to follow our ABC's in our Facebook!

Thanks for following :)

2.12. Another Q&A, yeah!

Hey!

Today we had a NASA plant physiologist, Dr. Raymond Wheeler, tell us about plant growth experiments and requirements that we should take into account while designing a new concept. We had a lot of specific questions for him considering our challenge, and his answers will help us a lot. 

Listening to Dr. Wheeler intensively.

We have to think about small-scale testing, look through previous designs and researches, before deciding anything. Luckily we have December and January for this!

Here we are, a little smarter than we were before. Can you spot all 8 bioMARTIANS that were there? ;)
Until next time, thanks for reading!

1.12. Firefighters or astronauts?

 Hello!

Our dark snowless December started off with a visit to the North Karelia Rescue Department, located in Joensuu, and we were lucky enough to learn about the physical requirements of fire fighters, smoke divers, and rescue personnel.

(Surprisingly similarly sounding to astronaut-training.)

We also got very important information about communication within a big organisation, when there's no time to spare.

Our presenter, Jani Kareinen (in the right picture), also showed the firetrucks and the personnels gym to us.
Most of us are now wondering if we're also able to do over 40 squats with 45 kg on our back, although that's probably impossible.

These guys handle nearly 4000 rescue missions in a year, and not even one of them includes that milk you forget in the fridge and it turns bad. They don't have time to rescue everything, but it's surely nice to have them when we really need!

18.11. Chitchat with Dr. Camarda

Hey!
Tonight our bioMARS had a chance to speak with Dr. Charles Camarda, as he is one of our main specialists and teachers during this Epic Challenge. Of course we had talked with him previously, but to have a personal chat to tell about our recent work, and to ask more specific questions was very nice.

<- Here are our faces right before starting the chat. The photo is blurry because the photographer must've been shaky from excitement. ;)

After that we had a Q&A with Space Veggies, whose mission a few years back was very similar to our goals. They kindly answered our questions and were also interested in our challenge and progress.

Bye now!

11.11. Q&A

Hey guys!

This Wednesday was partly a Q&A with ISRU expert Mr. Garrett Carman, and partly discussing about our communal knowledge on plant growing and food properties.

ISRU stands for "In Situ Resource Utilization", and that means making what we need from where we are and what we can take from there, for example, on Mars. We talked about creating energy and material, like glass fibre from the regolith or soil. Thank you, Mr. Carman, for answering our questions!

We will now make lessons for each other considering our challenge, so everyone learns from everyone and in the end everyone knows everything. ; )

4.11. Deep (Mars) diving

Hello!
It's been a long day, it's 8:30 pm again, and we started leaving the lecture. Only the girls stayed to take a picture for you guys to see our tired but happy faces.

What is our agenda now? In November we will dive deeper in our specific challenge (of growing food on Mars) and actually we had a nice way of rephrasing that to make our new problem:

0. “To develop an Earth-independent Food Production Capacity Increasing System”

0. In short, EFPCIS.

0. This is beautiful, we'll go with this one. 

0. Also, check our Facebook-page for our upcoming ABC's!

3.11. Sauna

Hey! Tonight our team and the Team Red Sandbox, were invited to sauna by our online working/ learning environment developer, Arcusys! 

The night also included us talking about the online environment, and together making it more suitable for our needs. For more information about the company, visit their site here.

NOW that is November already, we start focusing on our specific challenges, and that means reading a ton of articles and information. We try to keep you updated, thanks for the support! :)

Remember to stay warm in the cold Finnish autumn (or if you're not from Finland, still, go to a sauna if you can, really)!