Lunar Palace 1, Moon Palace 1 or Yuegong-1 (Chinese: 月宫1号 or 月宫1 or 月宫一号 or 月宫一 ; pinyin: ''Yuègōng 1 hào'' or ''Yuègōng 1'' or ''Yuègōng Yī hào'' or ''Yuègōng Yī'') is a

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...

research facility for developing a moon base. It is an environmentally closed facility where occupants can simulate a long-duration self-contained mission with no outside inputs other than power/energy.

Facilities

Lunar Palace 1 occupies a 160m² 500m³ self-contained laboratory in

Beijing } Beijing ( ; ; ), alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the capital of the People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's most populous national capital city, with over 21 ...

composed of a 58m² vegetation area of two cabins, a 42m² living area with three bedrooms, dining room, bathroom and waste disposal chamber. The lab was designed by Liu Hong of the Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (BUAA). The lab is a type of

bioregenerative life support system Bioregenerative life support systems (BLSS) are artificial ecosystems consisting of many complex symbiotic relationships among higher plants, animals, and microorganisms. As the most advanced life support technology, BLSS can provide a habitati ...

(BLSS), the third built in the world and the first in China. With a crew of three, 55% of the food consumed is to be produced internally, balanced by reserves. The

oxygen Oxygen is the chemical element with the symbol O and atomic number 8. It is a member of the chalcogen group in the periodic table, a highly reactive nonmetal, and an oxidizing agent that readily forms oxides with most elements as wel ...

would be regenerated through the vegetation compartment, and the water is to be recycled internally. The crew's waste was composted. Construction on the facility began in March 2013. The facility was unveiled on the Chinese New Year (31 January 2014). It was commissioned prior to the first mission starting in February 2014.

Missions

2014 - First research mission

The first research mission was the ''Integrative Experimental Facility "Lunar Palace 1" for Permanent Astrobase Life-support Artificial Closed Ecosystem (PALACE) Research'' (aka "Lunar Palace-1"), a 105-day mission of three researchers. The one man, Dong Chen, and two women, Xie Beizhen and Wang Minjuan, volunteers from the BUAA, conducted the first long-duration research project of this kind in China, 3 February to 20 May 2014. The crew grew five

cereal A cereal is any Poaceae, grass cultivated for the edible components of its grain (botanically, a type of fruit called a caryopsis), composed of the endosperm, Cereal germ, germ, and bran. Cereal Grain, grain crops are grown in greater quantit ...

s, including

wheat Wheat is a grass widely cultivated for its seed, a cereal grain that is a worldwide staple food. The many species of wheat together make up the genus ''Triticum'' ; the most widely grown is common wheat (''T. aestivum''). The archaeologi ...

corn Maize ( ; ''Zea mays'' subsp. ''mays'', from es, maíz after tnq, mahiz), also known as corn (North American and Australian English), is a cereal grain first domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 10,000 years ago. Th ...

soybean The soybean, soy bean, or soya bean (''Glycine max'') is a species of legume native to East Asia, widely grown for its edible bean, which has numerous uses. Traditional unfermented food uses of soybeans include soy milk, from which tofu an ...

peanut The peanut (''Arachis hypogaea''), also known as the groundnut, goober (US), pindar (US) or monkey nut (UK), is a legume crop grown mainly for its edible Seed, seeds. It is widely grown in the tropics and subtropics, important to both small ...

s and

lentil The lentil (''Lens culinaris'' or ''Lens esculenta'') is an edible legume. It is an annual plant known for its lens-shaped seeds. It is about tall, and the seeds grow in pods, usually with two seeds in each. As a food crop, the largest pro ...

s; 15

vegetable Vegetables are parts of plants that are consumed by humans or other animals as food. The original meaning is still commonly used and is applied to plants collectively to refer to all edible plant matter, including the flowers, fruits, stems, ...

s, including

carrot The carrot ('' Daucus carota'' subsp. ''sativus'') is a root vegetable, typically orange in color, though purple, black, red, white, and yellow cultivars exist, all of which are domesticated forms of the wild carrot, ''Daucus carota'', nat ...

cucumber Cucumber (''Cucumis sativus'') is a widely-cultivated Vine#Horticultural climbing plants, creeping vine plant in the Cucurbitaceae family that bears usually cylindrical Fruit, fruits, which are used as culinary vegetables.

s and

water spinach ''Ipomoea aquatica'', widely known as water spinach, is a semi- aquatic, tropical plant grown as a vegetable for its tender shoots. ''I. aquatica'' is generally believed to have been first domesticated in Southeast Asia. It is widely cultivate ...

; and one

fruit In botany, a fruit is the seed-bearing structure in flowering plants that is formed from the ovary after flowering. Fruits are the means by which flowering plants (also known as angiosperms) disseminate their seeds. Edible fruits in particu ...

strawberries The garden strawberry (or simply strawberry; ''Fragaria × ananassa'') is a widely grown hybrid species of the genus '' Fragaria'', collectively known as the strawberries, which are cultivated worldwide for their fruit. The fruit is widely ap ...

. The wheat provided the main source of calories and the primary source of oxygen. Meat was the primary foodstock; however, meat was grown, in the form of yellow

mealworm Mealworms are the larval form of the yellow mealworm beetle, ''Tenebrio molitor'', a species of darkling beetle. Like all holometabolic insects, they go through four life stages: egg, larva, pupa, and adult. Larvae typically measure about or ...

s, the crew's primary protein source. The diet studied was to determine if a space crew could subsist on a high protein diet with vegetables and mealworms. The mealworms, composed of 3/4

protein Proteins are large biomolecules and macromolecules that comprise one or more long chains of amino acid residues. Proteins perform a vast array of functions within organisms, including catalysing metabolic reactions, DNA replication, respo ...

, were chosen due to a United Nations study recommending them as a food source for the poor and undernourished; however, it was met with resistance from Western astronauts. They have a tendency to escape confinement. Mealworms reached the size of fingers in weeks. The mealworms were fed the leftover and inedible parts of the produce. The mission's ecological system was to be a testbed for the

controlled ecological life support system Controlled (or closed) ecological life-support systems (acronym CELSS) are a self-supporting life support system for space stations and colonies typically through controlled closed ecological systems, such as the BioHome, BIOS-3, Biosphere 2, Mars ...

(CELSS) for the permanent Chinese space station of the

China Manned Space Engineering Office China Manned Space Agency or CMSA () is an agency of the People's Republic of China responsible for the administration of China Manned Space Program, the Chinese human spaceflight program. Name The native name of the organization (') was i ...

(CSME). The BLSS system used on the mission was at the time the most advanced ever fielded.

2017-2018 Second research mission

For the second mission, two teams of four volunteers spent 370 days in isolation.

References

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External links