Plants Can Grow on the Moon, Science Says

Plants have been shown to grow in lunar soil for the first time, according to a peer-reviewed study published in Communications Biology yesterday.

🤿 A deeper dive… Researchers at the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences were able to secure moon rocks that NASA brought back from past Apollo missions.

• They planted thale cress, a member of the mustard family, in that lunar soil, added a little bit of nutrients, water and light, then sat back to watch what happened.
• The result: 100% of the seeds planted in moon dirt sprouted.

✋ Yes, but: After the first week, the plants in lunar soil were so stressed by the environment that they grew much more slowly than their control group counterparts. Which isn’t exactly a surprise.

Moon dirt is full of microscopic glass fragments from meteorite impacts that got everywhere in the Apollo lunar landers; it even wore down the spacesuits of the moonwalkers. And though there’s potentially things that can be done to reduce its harshness (adding nutrients to the ground, utilizing newer lunar soil, etc.), the researchers threw the test group to the wolves and planted the seeds with mostly no treatment at all.

🌕🌱 The bottom line: According to Robert Ferl, co-author of the study: “A major takeaway is that lunar plant growth is very possible... there is work to be done, but success is seeable and reachable.”

+Our thought bubble: After 10,000+ years of civilization, we’re witnessing firsthand the evolution of humans becoming a multiplanetary species (provided we don’t blow ourselves up first). How wild is that??