NASA's Next Frontier: Growing Plants On the Moon 193
An anonymous reader writes in with news about a NASA project that aims to grow plants on the moon in specially made containers. "In 2015, NASA will attempt to make history by growing plants on the Moon. If they are successful, it will be the first time humans have ever brought life to another planetary body. The Lunar Plant Growth Habitat team, a group of NASA scientists, contractors, students and volunteers, is finally bringing to life an idea that has been discussed and debated for decades. They will try to grow arabidopsis, basil, sunflowers, and turnips in coffee-can-sized aluminum cylinders that will serve as plant habitats. But these are no ordinary containers – they’re packed to the brim with cameras, sensors, and electronics that will allow the team to receive image broadcasts of the plants as they grow. These habitats will have to be able to successfully regulate their own temperature, water intake, and power supply in order to brave the harsh lunar climate."
Awesome (Score:5, Interesting)
Ok this is awesome.
Its been on my wishlist for unmanned travel that we'd try packaging up Earth plants and sending them to grow on alien worlds in some way. The Moon is a good starting point - Elon Musk got into SpaceX because he wanted to do it on Mars with a Greenhouse.
Personally I wish we'd just man up and shoot the appropriate organisms into Venus' atmosphere to start the terraforming process.
Re:Non SI units (Score:5, Interesting)
I just looked this up - to me "coffee can" meant a 180ml can of liquid coffee (around half the size of a can of coke) that's ready to drink, but apparently this isn't popular outside East Asia. According to Wikipedia, a standard coffee can, also known as a #10 can, has a volume of 13 cups and holds 3 lb of coffee. A cup is a US unit, distinct from the imperial unit of the same name, measuring 16 US tablespoons (again different from imperial tablespoons) or around 237 ml. So a coffee can is not quite 3.1 litres - slightly more than Thanshin's reply of 169.56 cubic inches (which is around 2.8 litres) but slightly less than ksemlerK's reply which comes out as 3.45 litres (unless that's the exterior dimensions?). It also seems kind of weird that the can is so big as it's also called a 3 lb coffee can, which is less than 1.5 kg and coffee is denser than water; perhaps when you open the can it's more than half empty?
Purpose? (Score:3, Interesting)
This experiment will test whether plants can survive radiation, flourish in partial gravity, and thrive in a small, controlled environment.
We can (and have) test all those things here on Earth. IIRC, NASA successfully grew lettuce in zero-g on a shuttle mission.
The moon is a terrible place to grow plants:
- 13-day/night cycle
- 275 Kelvin temperature variation
- 25 rem/yr radiation with no solar flare protection
- no water
- lunar regolith useless as soil
In other words you have to take the whole environment with you. Growing plants on a scale sufficient to be considered food on the moon is a long way off.
It makes for a good kids public outreach program, but let's be realistic: the moon is basically good for 2 things - a huge radio telescope on the far side, and the 1-50 ppb He-3 in the lunar regolith. By the time we're ready to do those things, robots will be good enough to do it all for us.