Growing Plants In Lunar Gravity

smooth wombat writes "If everything goes according to plan, an experiment designed to test whether plants can grow in the limited lunar gravity will hitch a ride with a competitor for the Google Lunar X Prize. 'The current prototype for the greenhouse is a 15-inch-high (37.5-centimeter-high) reinforced glass cylinder that's about 7 inches (18 centimeters) wide on the bottom. Seeds for a rapid-cycle type of Brassica plant — basically, mustard seeds — would be planted in Earth soil within the container.' The press release from Paragon Space Development Corporation outlines its partnership with Odyssey Moon to be the first to grow a plant on another world. In addition to the experiment, Paragon will be helping Odyssey with the thermal control system and lander design. To win the prize, Odyssey must land its craft on the lunar surface by the end of 2014."

Wow

[Kleen13]

What they're doing seems mundane until you think of the scale of things that have to happen right for this experiment to be successful. I'll be watching this....

Re:Plants grow in microgravity.

[MichaelSmith]

Thus any differences between earth grav and 1/6 earth grav are likely to be negligible. Dumbest experiment ever.

Famous last words...

Growing is easy

[Anonymous Coward]

The hard part is keeping them from frying in direct sunlight.

Re:What about...

[Anonymous Coward]

You can simulate increased gravity with a centrifuge but you can't make gravity that is already there disappear.

Re:Rapid growth

[Anonymous Coward]

Potatoes, perhaps?

The leaves are just solar panels, after all.

Re:What about...

[paxswill]

I don't thing you understand what he meant. He's suggesting orienting the plant opposite the normal configuration, with the soil and roots system being closer to the central axis, with the leafy portions of the plant growing out, away from the central axis. The problem with this is that you can't really completely eliminate the effects of gravity. If the centrifuge is spinning horizontally, you still have gravity pulling the plants sideways, and if you set it up vertically, you may be able to get and average of 1/6 gravity, but not a constant 1/6g, as you'll actually be increasing the acceleration when the centrifuge is going down.

Re:Plants grow in microgravity.

[Yvanhoe]

I beg to differ [www.jaxa.jp]. Differences do exist, and we have no idea what differences there will be under Moon's gravity. Will it be enough for the plants to recognize the vertical orientation ? Will they grow 6 times higher ? Same height ? Will the stem be thiner ? thicker ?

We can make educated guesses, but we are almost guaranteed to have surprises.

Re:Plants grow in microgravity.

[ravenshrike]

I'm pretty certain that lunar soil isn't up to the task of supporting most plant life. Which means you'll have a long wait until someone manages to grow something on an airless satellite. as for a hydroponics farm, we know those work.

Re:Plants grow in microgravity.

[AJWM]

The thing is, it wouldn't be hard to do the experiment at almost any gee level they wanted, using a centrifuge on the space station (well, two counter-rotating centrifuges to minimize angular momentum effects on the station). Of course for greater than one gee we can do the same thing on Earth.