WATCH LIVE Colloquium presentation by Dr. Ray Wheeler on Monday, April 20th at 4 p.m. Central

The Space Studies Colloquium Series continues on Monday, April 20th with a presentation by Dr. Ray Wheeler at 4 p.m. in Ryan Hall, room 111.

Dr. Wheeler currently serves as the lead of the Advanced Life Support research group at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center and is the Vice Chair of the Life Sciences Commission for the International Committee on Space Research (COSPAR).

“Bioregenerative Life Support Systems with Plants for Space Exploration”

Humans traveling and living in space will require reliable supplies of food, oxygen, and clean water. Currently these are stowed and resupplied, or partially regenerated with physical/chemical technologies (for example, on the International Space Station). An alternate approach would be to grow plants (crops), which could supply food and oxygen through photosynthesis, while recycling waste water through transpiration. The lecture will discuss research conducted by NASA on the use of “bioregenerative” life support concepts with plants, and potential applications of these concepts for lunar and Mars missions.

************************************************************************************
TO WATCH LIVE
in Realmedia player:
rtsp://realmedia.aero.und.edu/encoder/spst_colloquium.rm

In a web browser:
http://realmedia.aero.und.edu:7070/ramgen/encoder/spst_colloquium.rm

The live feed will be active about 5 minutes before the start of the presentation.

This semester’s colloquium presentations can also be accessed at the Space.Edu Colloquium website following the live presentation at http://www.space.edu/Academic%20Programs/colloquium.aspx
*************************************************************************************
BIO:
Ray Wheeler received a BS in Astronomy from Penn State University and an MS and Ph.D. in Plant Physiology from Utah State University. Following graduate school he worked as a post-doctoral associate in the Dept. of Horticulture and the “Biotron” at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. His research at Wisconsin focused on controlled environment production studies and physiological responses of potato, one of the candidate crops for NASA’s bioregenerative life support program. In 1988 he joined Bionetics Corporation at Kennedy Space Center, Florida, where he led the plant research group studying crops for life support on future space missions. Many of these studies were carried out in NASA’s Biomass Production Chamber, which provided a closed atmosphere (113 m3) with 20 m2 growing area. In 1990 Ray joined NASA where he still works as a senior scientist and plant researcher Kennedy Space Center. His research with NASA has focused on plant gas exchange (photosynthesis, respiration, and transpiration), plant responses to elevated carbon dioxide and hypobaric pressures, plant growth and development under different lighting systems (spectral quality studies), and the use of hydroponic approaches for growing crops in closed systems. Ray currently serves as the lead of the Advanced Life Support research group at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center and is the Vice Chair of the Life Sciences Commission for the International Committee on Space Research (COSPAR).