NASA teams with Google to grow plants on the moon by 2015 to create habitable environment

Obviously, the plants can’t be embedded into the lunar surface then left alone, so NASA is constructing a small, lightweight (a little over two pounds), self-sustaining habitat for the vegetation. The habitat will be delivered to the moon via the Moon Express, a lunar lander that’s part of the Google Lunar X Prize, a competition to create a robotic spacecraft that can fly to and land on the moon.

Once the lander arrives on the moon, water will be added to basil, turnip, and Arabidopsis (a small flowering plant) seeds kept in the habitat, then monitored for five to 10 days and compared to controls back on Earth. NASA will also monitor the actual habitat itself, looking toward its scalability since a two-pound habitat won’t support human life. Currently, the chamber can support 10 basil seeds, 10 turnip seeds, and around 100 Arabidopsis seeds. It also holds the bit of water that initiates the germination process, and uses the natural sunlight that reaches the moon to support the plant life.

In order to study the quality of the plant growth and movement, the habitat will take images and beam them back home.

If NASA doesn’t run into any unexpected bumps, its long-term plans include attempting to grow a more diverse crop of plants, longer growth periods, and reproduction experiments. The longer the experiments, the more we’ll learn about the long-term effects of a lunar environment on Earth plants.

www.extremetech.com...

Did not find any posts on it via search engine. Seems as a great idea, it was about time to make something like that happen and 2015 is not too far away. It seems as if the new space age is beginning with far more different players than two - US, European Union, Russia, China, India, Japan etc. Everybody has some plans for the near future and a race is getting heated up, who will be the first to anything, whether a man on Mars, plants on moon or some other first. When it comes to space, next decades will be very interesting, considering all the plans

reply to post by Cabin


Well it's about time, I have often wondered why we have not made more effort in terra forming the moon. Seems like the most logical place to start to learn what's necessary.

That and any other device to start to build up an atmosphere, with the end result housing terrestrial life in some way, what a great experiment.

Thanks for posting this I most likely would have missed it otherwise.

Cheers.

"If NASA doesn’t run into any unexpected bumps..." Right. Because having humans on the surface FOR DAYS gave no better science than pictures of a few seeds. LOL

reply to post by Cabin


It's a great experiment. Money spent like this is much more positive than blowing it all on weapons..

I love the way that experiments are becoming more open sourced.

I can think of some interesting little seeds they could grown on the moon.

Cabin
Did not find any posts on it via search engine.

NASA hopes to put a garden on the Moon
www.abovetopsecret.com...

reply to post by Cabin


The problem is the plants need CO2, which Mars has tons of. Throw tons of fertilizer down on Mar's surface and plant some very strong reliable trees. Now that'd be interesting.

Sometiems I wonder if this methodical approahc to space exploration is worse in the long run. I understand the extreme requirements for living in space and the precision calculations and machinery needed. I understand we must move slowly into this frontier for safety. However, how do we know when we're moving too cautiously? We don't have a long history of space exploration to use for comparison. We're learning as we go. In this process of learning, we will probably make mistakes. Yet we could also be moving too fast, right? Hard to say, I suppose. One thing I am sure of is once more countries become actively involved in space, this issue of too fast or too slow should be resolved through economy and competition - as it's RESULTS that matter.

And by doing so possibly effecting the balance or relationship between Earth and the moon. Tides and geology.
They have assessed any possibility of this happening haven't they?

Plants also hold frequencies don't they? and the planet Earth also has a specific frequency hasn't it?

So in other words, the Moon aliens wanted to make some pasta sauce and they had no basil, hence this trade agreement.

Groovy.

reply to post by jonnywhite


Figures i would be born a century too late to be a space-fighter pilot.
Here's hoping for reincarnation and a galactic war.

reply to post by Cabin


Suspect we will need to build our growing bunkers underground, that solar radiation will make the food dangerous.

I'm hoping that other countries will put their hands up to develop different aspects of this. - Independent power supply, CO2 / Oxygen transfer, low gravity growing. We need a big digger up there and someone to tow the bunker from earth orbit and drop it in a big hole.

Glad these first steps are being made, thanks for posting.

reply to post by sprtpilot


No, it's actually because we don't know how plants will grow on the Moon. We can calculate and expect how a Man will walk on the moon but we can't calculate how a plant will grow on the same 1/6th gravity environment.

Regarding the experiment, I think we'll never be able to colonize the Moon and live on it since it has so little gravity and our body wasn't made to live in it. Even with artificial exercise we will lose a lot of muscle and bone mass.

reply to post by Cabin


Experiments to see what a habitat can do on the moon. This could be the stepping stone to actually going and living on the moon. What they did decades ago (if it happened, which I personally think it did, but not 100% sure) was with little knowledge of what would happen. I think the biggest evidence of us not walking on the moon is nothing went wrong for the most part, even Apollo 13 made it home safe after aborting. But if we can do this experiment, that would settle the moon landing hoax for me, ok maybe to 99% convinced.

We should be using the Moon as a base to explore the rest of the solar system then the universe!

Revolution9
reply to post by Cabin

 

It's a great experiment. Money spent like this is much more positive than blowing it all on weapons.

.

I love the way that experiments are becoming more open sourced.

I can think of some interesting little seeds they could grown on the moon.

Who will control intergalactic drug smuggling lol.

reply to post by JameSimon


If you were a 'Mooninite', you'd require less muscle and bone mass. That isn't the problem humans would have ... it'd be shielding from radiation/particles that our magnetosphere and atmosphere protect us from here on earth.

reply to post by FreeThinkerIdealist


Actually our body and internal organs would suffer a lot under that low gravity. It's not practical to live there for long periods of time, nor safe.