The Australian scientists said that the project is an early step towards growing plants for food, medicine and oxygen production, which are all crucial to establishing human life on the moon.
Sydney: Australian scientists are trying to grow plants on the Moon by 2025 in a new mission unveiled Friday that they said could help pave the way for a future colony.
Plant biologist Brett Williams, from the Queensland University of Technology, said seeds would be carried by the Beresheet 2 spacecraft — a private Israeli Moon mission.
They would be watered inside the sealed chamber after landing and monitored for signs of germination and growth.
Plants will be chosen based on how well they cope in extreme conditions, and how quickly they germinate, he said.
One likely choice is an Australian “resurrection grass” known as Tripogon loliiformis that can survive without water in a dormant state.
“The project is an early step towards growing plants for food, medicine and oxygen production, which are all crucial to establishing human life on the moon,” the researchers said in a statement.
Caitlin Byrt, an Associate Professor from the Australian National University in Canberra, said the research was also relevant to food security fears driven by climate change.
“If you can create a system for growing plants on the moon, then you can create a system for growing food in some of the most challenging environments on Earth,” Byrt said in a statement.
ANU to support Aussie start-up in growing plants on the moon
The Australian National University (ANU) will lend its unique expertise in plant biology to an ambitious mission led by Australian space start-up Lunaria One that aims to grow plants on the moon by as early as 2025.
Lunaria One’s Australian Lunar Experiment Promoting Horticulture (ALEPH) will be the first in a series of experiments to investigate whether plants can not only tolerate but thrive on the lunar surface. The project is an early step toward growing plants for food, medicine and oxygen production, which are all crucial to establishing human life on the moon.
The researchers hope the lessons learnt from this mission will help unlock new methods to boost sustainable food production on Earth and bolster food security in the face of climate-driven weather disasters.
The mission is an international collaboration between a number of institutions, including Queensland University of Technology (QUT), RMIT University, ANU and Ben Gurion University in Israel, as well as industry bodies. After landing on the lunar surface, the plants’ growth and general health will be monitored for 72 hours and data and images will be beamed back to Earth. Citizen scientists and school children from around the world will be invited to use the data to conduct their own experiments to identify which plant varieties have the best chance of growing on the moon.
Lunaria One Director Lauren Fell, from QUT, said: “The key to this mission is to get humans involved and to give them a say in how we get there. The ALEPH project aims to open up the science and engineering behind growing life on the moon so that anyone can be involved.”
Can plants grow on moon?
In May,2022 NASA said, Scientists were trying to answer two fundamental questions whether plants can grow in the regolith. And second, how might that one day help humans have an extended stay on the Moon?
According to NASA, the answer to the first question is yes, lunar soil is cultivable. Scientists said that they were not as robust as plants grown in Earth soil, or even as those in the control group grown in a lunar simulant made from volcanic ash, but they did indeed grow.
“To explore further and to learn about the solar system we live in, we need to take advantage of what’s on the Moon, so we don’t have to take all of it with us,” Jacob Bleacher, the Chief Exploration Scientist supporting NASA’s Artemis program said.
Farming in moon’s soil
Scientists used lunar soil brought to Earth by Apollo 11, 12, and 17 missions, with only a gram of regolith allotted for each plant. The team added water and then seeds to the samples. They then put the trays into terrarium boxes in a cleanroom. A nutrient solution was added daily.
The breakthrough has been made by a team of scientists from the University of Florida.
“After two days, they started to sprout. Everything sprouted. I can’t tell you how astonished we were! Every plant whether in a lunar sample or in a control looked the same up until about day six,” Anna-Lisa Paul, who is also a professor in Horticultural Sciences, said.
They then harvested the plants just after 20 days and studied the RNA. Sequencing the RNA revealed the patterns of genes that were expressed, which showed that the plants were indeed under stress and had reacted the way researchers have seen Arabidopsis respond to growth in other harsh environments.
The team is hopeful that this new breakthrough will open the doors for them to one day harvest crops on the Moon as more and more research is done.
