Planting the Seeds of Farming in Space

As humans colonize the Solar System, we will need to grow food in order to sustain a growing population in space. Now, a team of researchers have successfully grown crops in simulated lunar and Martian soil, potentially bringing the day we become an interplanetary species a little closer.

If the future of the human race includes living on the Moon and Mars, then we will soon need to learn how to grow food in space. One option would be to produce crops in artificial hydroponic systems, but such a plan would involve transporting large quantities of equipment to the Moon and Mars, at significant expense. Growing food on Earth and transporting it to colonies in space provides another set of problems — the weight and expenses of launch — as well as the possibility of critical food shipments being lost during the journey. The easiest way to feed hungry interplanetary inhabitants would be to grow food using material which can easily be collected from the surfaces of the worlds we will inhabit.

A new experiment carried out in the Netherlands has successfully grown crops in simulated lunar and Martian soil (simulant) in their third attempt to simulate raising crops in space. During this latest experiment, researchers planted 10 different edible plants, including garden cress, rocket, tomato, radish, rye, quinoa, leek, chives, peas and spinach. Nine of these crops grew successfully in both types of alien soil, with spinach being the lone exception.