Growing Plants on the Moon May Be Feasible

Smivs writes "European scientists say that growing plants on the moon should be possible. Scientists in the Netherlands believe growing plants on our sister satellite would be useful as a tool to learn how life adapts to lunar conditions. It would also aid in understanding the challenges that might be faced by manned bases. 'The new step, taken in the experiments reported at the EGU, is to remove the need for bringing nutrients and soil from Earth. A team led by Natasha Kozyrovska and Iryna Zaetz from the National Academy of Sciences in Kiev planted marigolds in crushed anorthosite, a type of rock found on Earth which is very similar to much of the lunar surface. In neat anorthosite, the plants fared very badly. But adding different types of bacteria made them thrive; the bacteria appeared to draw elements from the rock that the plants needed, such as potassium.'"

Comments

Very careful--only one chance

[crow]

We may only get one chance to do this right. If we introduce a bacteria that can survive without artificial shelter (doubtful, but possible), it's there forever. Many of the problems we've had here with invasive species has been due to things introduced intentionally that ended up doing things that weren't anticipated.

Granted, the moon is a harsh enough environment that anything we do will probably only be in a pressurized man-made structure, but that might not be the case if we try it on Mars.

No decayed organic matter = no soil

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Why wouldn't they try a plant that grows in extremely low nutrient soil? There are plenty of plants that grow in sand along beaches and generate their own food through photosynthesis (all plants do, but some rely on it more than others).

Garden flowers are probably the worst type of plant to try to grow in nutrient-free dirt.

Re:Air?

[calebt3]

Why? If they could get CO2 from the soil, it could work.

Re:Huh?

[pclminion]

I don't object to "satellite," I object to "sister."

I can't find a single way of looking at things that would place Earth and Moon in a sibling relationship in any reasonable hierarchy. The Moon orbits the Earth -- no matter how you slice it it's not our "sister."

Pointing out that in some sense the Earth also orbits the Moon (around a center of gravity which is physically inside the Earth) doesn't really help, because you could use the same argument to say that the Sun is orbiting the Earth, and that would make the Sun our sister as well, which of course due to the transitive nature of siblinghood, would logically make the Moon a "sister" of the Sun, which is even more ridiculous a notion.

So uh, yeah.