A Smart Spectral Polarimetric Imager for Autonomous Plant Health Monitoring

For future long-duration space exploration missions, NASA expressed the need for plant systems that may provide a nutrient dense supplement to crew diet and possibly other life support functions, such as CO2 removal, O2 production, water recovery, and waste recycling.nbsp; Current and future infrastructure for plant growth include chambers with controlled environments.nbsp; To ensure optimal growing conditions in these chambers, the plants will require precise monitoring of health throughout the plant life cycle.nbsp; These monitoring systems will need to operate autonomously with little crew involvement.nbsp; Current plant monitoring instruments include multispectral and hyperspectral sensing that require post-process algorithms to detect physiological phenomena.nbsp; In Phase I, Space Lab Technologies (Space Lab) and the Space Plants Lab at the University of Florida (UF) investigated an improved approach for monitoring space plant health using a smart spectral polarimetric (SSP) imager to monitor morphological features and stresses.nbsp; The Phase II work builds upon the prototypes and analyses completed in Phase I, which includes a deliverable of an engineering demonstration unit (EDU) to NASA Kennedy Space Center.nbsp; The EDU is compact and intended for use in the ground-based plant growth chamber equivalents of the Advance Plant Habitat (APH) or VEGGIE.