A JOB FOR RED THUMBS
Can food be grown on Mars? Future colonists had better hope so,
A journey of 35 million miles starts with a single . . . vegetable patch.
Just 100 candidates — including four Canadians — remain on an international short list to make a one-way trip to Mars by 2025. While they prepare for the next phase of the selection process, crop scientists in the Netherlands are wrestling with the question asked before any road trip: What’ll we eat?
What’s Martian soil like?
Ecologist Wieger Wamelink has been getting his hands dirty addressing the practical demands of the $6-billion Mars One project. Experiments with 14 crops grown in simulated soil — modelled on that of Mars and the moon, based on the volcanic soil of Hawaii, and provided by NASA — have seen all of them germinate.
What will grow?
Wamelink’s experiments involved 840 pots, a huge amount. Species included rye, quinoa, peas, leeks, spinach, tomato and chives. His team has harvested garden cress, radishes and garden rocket that “smells really good,” Wamelink said.
“But I didn’t dare to taste it. I have to test it first. There are heavy metals in those soils. It can be poisonous.”
What about bees?
When his plants started to flower, Wamelink had a problem: no bees. “What we did was take a paint brush and pollinate all the flowering plants by hand. “You cannot do that on a large scale by hand, or people would be busy all day just doing that. So we need a pollinator.” And worms would be nice. Bacteria, too.
What about water?
There are big hurdles to clear before anyone blasts off. Water must be transported; low Martian gravity creates water management challenges; and low temperatures and lack of light would be a nuisance. Theoretically, enclosed facilities could be constructed and LED lamps installed to deal with that. Of course, then, where would the Mars-tronauts get electricity?
And the big question
Rome wasn’t built in day. Neither will a space colony. But Wamelink expects he and his colleagues will have developed a food cultivation system for Mars within a decade. “If we get funding,” he said with a laugh.
A perennial problem on any planet.