Continuous human habitation of the Moon is the state aim of many major space-faring nations in the coming decades. Reaching that aim requires many tasks, but one of the most fundamental is feeding those humans. Shipping food consistently from Earth will likely be prohibitively expensive shortly, so DLR, Germany's space agency, is working on an alternative.
This semi-autonomous greenhouse can be used to at least partially feed the astronauts in residence on the Moon. To support that goal, a team of researchers from DLR released a paper about EVE, a robotic arm intended to help automate the operations of the first lunar greenhouse, at the IEEE Aerospace conference in March.
The EDEN Versatile End-effector (or EVE) is only possibly named as an homage to the life-seeking robot from WALL-E. But it is designed to interface with the EDEN LUNA greenhouse, a project at DLR meant to result in a fully functional greenhouse for use on the lunar surface. The advantages of such a greenhouse have been discussed in other articles, but needless to say, the EDEN LUNA is the best-supported project that will likely result in a fully functional system on the Moon when the time is right.
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