Growing Beyond Earth

An interdisciplinary team of George Mason University students is one of 5 finalists in the Collegiate category of the Growing Beyond Earth Maker Contest sponsored by NASA and Fairchild Botanical Garden. The student team designed a gardening system, which they named TetraEden. The system is designed to efficiently use available growing space aboard spacecraft that inherently have minimal space for growing food. As finalists the team has been selected to go on to the next round of prototyping their design. Over the coming weeks they will be building a working prototype for growing red romaine lettuce based on their winning design from the Phase I competition. 

Left to right - Richard Yoder, Andrew Siddall, Milagros Soto Méndez, Kathleen McCabe (mentor)

The team was assembled and supported at the MIX by Maker mentors who walked the team through the design process. For Phase II of the competition they will be building their growing chamber at the MIX utilizing prototyping tools and resources from the MIX maker network.