Moon soil used to grow plants for first time in breakthrough test
Scientists have grown plants in lunar soil for the first time, an important step towards making long-term stays on the moon possible.
"I can't tell you how astonished we were," said Anna-Lisa Paul, a University of Florida professor who co-authored a paper on the findings.
After that, differences emerged. The plants grown in moon soil started to show stress, developed more slowly and ended up stunted.
"This research is critical to Nasa's long-term human exploration goals as we'll need to use resources found on the Moon and Mars to develop food sources for future astronauts living and operating in deep space," said Nasa chief Bill Nelson.
"This fundamental plant growth research is also a key example of how Nasa is working to unlock agricultural innovations that could help us understand how plants might overcome stressful conditions in food-scarce areas here on Earth."
One challenge for researchers is that there simply is not much lunar soil to experiment with. Over a three-year period from 1969, Nasa astronauts brought back 382kg (842lb) of lunar rocks, core samples, pebbles, sand and dust from the lunar surface.
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