Our Davis MS STEM team has developed a multi-year sustainability project that continues to evolve in ambition and impact. What began as a working classroom aquaponics system—where students learned the science of nutrient cycles, water filtration, and food production—has grown into increasingly complex engineering challenges connected to global and planetary sustainability.
Two years ago, students prototyped an aquaponics-based food truck designed to bring fresh produce into urban food deserts. Last year, they advanced the concept by engineering aquaponics systems housed in recycled shipping containers aboard a retrofitted cargo vessel, demonstrating how food could be grown sustainably at sea. This year, students have taken the concept beyond Earth, designing a prototype Europa-bound spacecraft capable of growing food in deep space.
We are once again collaborating with Colegio Militar de Manaus in Brazil, whose students are contributing a closed-loop sanitation system for the spacecraft. Together, our teams are modeling regenerative life-support systems that minimize waste and maximize efficiency.
In addition, our students designed remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) to explore the subsurface ocean long speculated to exist beneath Jupiter’s moon Europa. The lessons learned—closed-loop systems, water stewardship, and resource management—are directly applicable to sustaining life on our own planet
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