From Project Mercury to the Breadboard Project

NASA's Project Mercury began as a response to the cold war with the Soviet Union and had a number of goals: to place a manned spacecraft in orbital flight around the earth; to investigate man's performance capabilities and his ability to function in the environment of space and to recover the man and the spacecraft safely. One aspect of preflight testing included the use of an altitude chamber to test each capsule and allow the astronauts to engage in simulated missions within a vacuum environment. Flash forward to 1985. The Biomedical Operations and Research Office at Kennedy Space Center proposed to use the chamber for an unusual mission under what was known as the Controlled Ecological Life Support Systems (CELSS)Breadboard Project. During 1985 into 1987, the chamber was converted to an environmentally-controlled, hydroponic plant growth chamber termed the "Biomass Production Chamber" and operated through late 2001.