Scientists sprout life in soil from moon
For the first time, scientists have grown plants in soil from the moon collected by Nasa’s Apollo astronauts.
Researchers had no idea if anything would sprout in the harsh moon dirt and wanted to see if it could be used to grow food by the next generation of lunar explorers. The results stunned them.
“Holy cow. Plants actually grow in lunar stuff. Are you kidding me?” said Robert Ferl of the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.
Ferl and his colleagues planted thale cress in moon soil returned by Apollo 11’s Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, and other moonwalkers. The good news: All of the seeds sprouted.
The downside was that after the first week, the coarseness and other properties of the lunar soil stressed the small, flowering weeds so much that they grew more slowly than seedlings planted in fake moon dirt from Earth.
Results were published in Communications Biology.
“This is a big step forward to know that you can grow plants,” said Simon Gilroy, a space plant biologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who had no role in the study. “The real next step is to go and do it on the surface of the moon.”
Moon dirt is full of tiny, glass fragments from micrometeorite impacts that got everywhere in the Apollo lunar landers and wore down the moonwalkers’ spacesuits.
One solution might be to use younger geologic spots on the moon, like lava flows, for digging up soil.
Only 382kg of moon rocks and soil were brought back by six Apollo crews. Most of the lunar stash remained locked away, forcing researchers to experiment with simulated soil. Nasa finally doled out 12g to the University of Florida researchers early last year. Nasa said the timing for such an experiment was right, with the agency looking to put astronauts back on the moon in a few years.