Scientists have grown plants in lunar soil for the first time, an important step towards enabling long-term stays on the moon. However, it should not be thought that farming on the Moon will be easy, because when it comes to productivity, farming in the lunar regolith is no different than trying to grow crops on hard cliffs.
Scientists are satisfied with the ability of lunar soil to sprout seeds, albeit short. Since it will be very expensive to transport soil from the Earth to the Moon, it is necessary to find a way to farm on the soil of the Moon. Only 382 kilograms of Moon rock was brought to Earth by the Apollo missions.
Researchers used small dust samples collected during the 1969-1972 Apollo missions to grow a type of cress.
A team of scientists experimenting with this material announced in an article published in the journal Communications Biology that the first sprouting was achieved in the lunar soil.
Surprisingly, the seeds sprouted two days later.
“I can’t tell you how surprised we are,” said University of Florida professor Anna-Lisa Paul, who wrote a paper about the findings. To him, the plant looked the same until about day 6. But then differences emerged. Plants grown in lunar soil began to show stress, developed more slowly and became stunted.
In summary, it is stated that plants develop more slowly in the lunar soil and remain smaller. Also, because the lunar soil is deficient in some elements, they do not grow as healthy as plants on Earth.
But officials say it’s a breakthrough and has worldly implications.
Researchers think that the sampled soil is unproductive because it is open to solar winds, and samples taken from the layers below the Moon’s surface may be more productive.
NASA chief Bill Nelson said, “This research is critical to NASA’s long-term goals of human exploration as we will need to use resources found on the Moon and Mars to develop food sources for future astronauts living and operating in deep space. “This fundamental plant growth research is also a study by NASA that could help us understand how plants can cope with stressful conditions in regions with food shortages on Earth.”
ONLY 1 GRAM GIVEN
One challenge for scientists is that there isn’t a lot of lunar land to experiment with, the BBC reported. Over a three-year period from 1969, NASA astronauts brought 382 kg (842 lb) of moon rock, core samples, pebbles, sand and dust from the lunar surface. The University of Florida team was given just 1g of soil per plant for experimentation, from specimens that had been locked up for decades.
NASA plans to land humans on the moon for the first time since 1972, with a mission planned for 2025.
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