For many of us, gardening has been a therapeutic distraction during this time of pandemic quarantine. But some researchers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory have been gardening at home with one specific goal in mind: growing food on the Moon.
“We are trying to demonstrate that astronauts can use horticulture to grow their own food on the Moon,” said NASA scientist Max Coleman. “We want to take a small step in that direction, to show that the lunar soil contains things that can be extracted from it as nutrients for plants.”
Coleman and his co-workers have been trapped at home since mid-March 2020, but have been working for more than a year on their investigation of a simulated lunar regolith. They are studying how fast water is absorbed between the grains of the lunar soil, how large the particles are and what proportions of minerals are ideal for growing food in the regolith. Also, they are trying to determine what grows best in the regolith.
They were about to start doing hands-on tests of soil sensors that could eventually be used on the Moon when orders to stay home were issued. While the team was unable to bring home any moon simulators or ground sensors, Coleman decided to innovate. She placed an online order for some desert sand, which doesn’t have any organic matter, making it a good substitute for the lunar regolith simulator.
Then, he created his own sensors by folding aluminum foil four or five times to make a strip, and placing them on his battery tester to measure the electrical resistance of the water added to the sand. He decided to use radish seeds and also ordered them online for home delivery.
“[Radishes] They’ve been used in space before and germinate very, very fast, “Coleman said in a press release. This makes them a good bet for relatively quick experimental results. Also, radishes don’t require a lot of water to germinate, so which provides a good test of what could grow rapidly on a lunar day (28 days, with 14 days in a row of sunlight).
Since he couldn’t work in his lab at JPL, Coleman used other items on hand. She put the sand in a delicatessen container with four sections, using varying amounts of water in all four sections. The results were quite surprising: the radishes in the section with the least amount of water germinated first and best, which was interesting because, according to Coleman, “we want to see how little water we can escape.”
The team’s research is helping them develop a small science charge on a commercial spacecraft going to the Moon, which, if selected, would be delivered to the lunar surface through the Commercial Lunar Charging Services (CLPS) initiative. from NASA. The team planned to develop the experiment as a suitable payload for a CLPS spacecraft in terms of size, mass, power requirement, and communication needs.
His work is aimed at utilizing biological resources on-site, addressing challenges such as where to get food instead of how to get water and oxygen. Coleman explained that for future astronauts, “the more you can use what’s already there, the more efficient you can be because you don’t have to carry as much with you.”
Going to the moon, the radish experiment would complement research currently underway on the International Space Station, such as the currently orbiting Vegetable Production System, or Veggie, featuring plants growing in specially prepared soil, with the goal of eventually providing food for space station astronauts.
“We cannot adequately test here on Earth with perfect lunar soil, but we are doing everything we can here. So we want to show that it really works on the Moon, “said Coleman.
