Wonderfully pleasurable! Scientists have grown plants in lunar soil for the first time. Finding plants sprout in the Moon soil is an important step towards making long-term stays on the moon possible.
Researchers had used small samples of dust collected during the 1969-1972 Apollo missions to grow a type of cress. Surprisingly enough, the seeds sprouted after two days.
How is the Moon soil and how was it collected?
Moon soil is not actually soil, but it is just a fine grained powder that floats around on the surface. It is made of particles ranging from 0.002mm to 0.05 mm in diameter. Earth’s soil and Moon soil are almost indistinguishable. However, lunar soil is more porous and has a lower density than Earth’s soil.
The soil can be collected from the surface of the moon through sampling. The samples are then stored in vacuum chambers for later use. During the lunar mission in 1969, Apollo 15 astronauts brought back samples of lunar soil weighing about 2.8 kg and sealed in a container. Then in 1972, the astronauts of Apollo 16 took another sample weighing about 4.4 kg.
Nasa astronauts brought back 382kg (842lb) of lunar rocks, core samples, pebbles, sand and dust from the lunar surface in over a three-year period from 1969.
The soil samples were then kept in air-tight containers inside a cold storage facility. The samples were later used in various studies.
Plants sprout in the Moon soil
Anna-Lisa Paul, a University of Florida professor who co-authored a paper on the findings, said, “I can’t tell you how astonished we were”. She further added, “Every plant – whether in a lunar sample or in a control – looked the same up until about day six.”
Soon after that, differences emerged as the plants grown in lunar soil started to show stress, developed more slowly and ended up stunted.
However, the researchers said that it was a breakthrough – and one that had earthly implications.
What are the future implications for us?
Nasa chief Bill Nelson said that this research was critical to Nasa’s long-term human exploration goals as they would 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 key example of how Nasa is working to unlock agricultural innovations that could help us understand how plants might overcome stressful conditions in food-scarce areas here on Earth”, he added.
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According to the researchers, the challenge for them is that there simply is not much lunar soil to experiment with. They, however, explained that they were encouraged by this successful experiment and are hopeful to grow plants on the Moon’s surface in the future.
This experiment has finally proved that it is possible to grow plants on the moon. In the future, this move will provide us with an opportunity to live and work on the Moon for a long period of time.
In addition to this, this experiment will also help us understand how plants can grow even in a very stressful condition. Whether it will be successful or not, we don’t know yet. But, it’s a good step towards colonizing the solar system and beyond.
