HUNCH Nanolab for Space Crop Production

The NASA HUNCH Nanolab for Space Crop Production project (proposed by HUNCH mentor Nancy Hall), was one of several Design and Prototype (D&P) projects during the 2025-2026 school year. The objective of the Nanolab project was for students to design, build and test a 2U Nanolab to study growth media to improve the design of space crop production systems for space functional.

Several teams from the HUNCH Final Design Review in April 2026 shipped their prototype to NASA Glenn Research Center where the prototypes were reviewed and assessed for dropping in the 2.2 Second Drop Tower. Only one team, Tri-County Regional Vocational Technical High School in MA, had an operational Nanolab deemed ready to drop. The Tri-County team used a bimomimcry-based watering system based on the the scale pattern of the Thorny Devil Lizard along with an artificial intelligence system to determine when the plant in the bottom of the bowl is dry, and the pump directs water up toward the base of the bowl. The team travel to NASA Glenn to witness the drops where they conducted three successful drops in the 2.2 Second Drop Tower.

A youtube video was created by HUNCH Design and Prototype Program Manager, Glenn Johnson about their HUNCH Nanolab project that was dropped in the 2.2 Second Drop Tower. The video starts with an overview of the Nanolab for Crop Production project followed by an overview of NASA Glenn’s drop tower facilities, an interview with the Tri-County students who described their Nanolab design and subsystems as well as results from the their 3 drops along with how they would improve from their experiments.