Water cooled LED lights have made their way into space!

Safe food production is an ongoing issue for the EDEN Institute of Space Systems project. Heliospectra AB, working as part of this project, has designed high intensity LED grow lights to be used for this purpose on both the Internation Space Station and, hopefully, for future space exploration.

Like most things space-related, growing plants this no easy task. The things we take for granted on Earth, such as  gravity and natural light, are virtually non-existent in space.

So, if humans are to be self-sufficient in space, then these are challenges that need to be overcome. By allowing output intensity to be controlled and the colour to be changed to match crop requirements, these LEDs provide another step towards this goal.

LED lighting is generally more energy efficient than conventional systems, and the addition of water cooling allows heat from the lights to be reused.  Due to the limited resources available in space, this is potentially very useful. There is no reason, however, why the same approach shouldn’t be taken here on Earth since our resources are also finite. Although the EDEN ISS project is developing energy efficient technologies for space applications, they could also be used closer to home.