In The Martian, astronaut Matt Damon, stranded on Mars, grew potatoes on the Red Planet to survive. We don’t know how likely the potato thing is to be true, but it has been proven that tomatoes can be grown on Martian soil.
Famous ketchup brand Heinz conducted a special research study with a team of astrobiologists to find out if future human settlers on Mars could make their own ketchup. The firm collaborated with 14 astrobiologists from Florida Tech to grow tomatoes in a Martian soil-like environment.
“The team has successfully obtained a Heinz tomato crop from the brand’s proprietary tomato seeds that has passed rigorous quality and flavor standards,” the company said in a statement.
It’s currently not possible to buy Heinz’s ketchup made with Martian tomatoes, but if our descendants who will one day settle on Mars can grow potatoes here, it looks like they’ll have no problem finding ketchup to pour over.
Andrew Palmer, an astrobiologist who led the project that has been running for two years, said: “Until now, most of the efforts to explore ways to grow plants under simulated Mars conditions have been short-term plant growth studies. What this project did was look at the long-term food harvest. We’re trying to get a quality crop that would be Heinz Tomatoes. We succeeded,” he says.
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