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!

One, Two,Three,Testing

Hello, everyone!

This week our main focus has been finishing all the interesting experiments we have been doing lately.
To refresh your memory, these tests include growing different kinds of plants in artificial soil, measuring the endurance and efficency of optical fibre and making sure we find the right balance in the gas exchange between insects and plants.
Did you know that a thick optical fibre can take more heat than a thin one? Or that potatoes can grow in a soil that is compeletely manmade?

 The team is discussing about the details of the final prototype.

Kristina is measuring the amount of light transmitting through a fibre cable.

Jesse is building an airtight chamber... And smiling at the camera.

The heat meter we used to measure the fibre's heat resistance.

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!

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!