Space Access 10: Jane Poynter of Paragon SDC

Jane Poynter
Paragon Space Development Corporation
Tucson, Arizona

• Founded the company 15 years ago with future husband Taber MacCallum while both were living inside of Biosphere 2
• Focuses heavily on life support systems
• Main headquarters in Tucson, Arizona

Projects

• Working on life support for Constellation program
• Funding from NASA for life support systems earlier this year as part of commercial crew project – Air Revitalization System designed for anyone who wants to fly into space…
• Working with most of the vehicle providers to make it modular enough and flexible enough to fly on almost any vehicle going to LEO
• Collaborated with Bigelow Aerospace space station prototypes
• Life support for Excalibur Almaz space station
• Building a new NASA spacesuit in cooperation with Oceaneering
• Adapted spacesuit technology for Navy dive suit that allows divers to go into polluted water
• Working with Odyssey Moon to send greenhouse to the moon
• Working on inflatable structures for future space exploration…
• Designing system to generate oxygen from lunar regolith that also removes contaminants…

Details on Lunar Greenhouse

• Greenhouse originally designed for a Mars flight that was never launched
• Using mustard seeds because they can germinate during the two-week lunar day
• Hope the seeds sprout up again after the lunar night is over