Plants Successfully Grown in Lunar Soil

Scientists have successfully grown Arabidopsis plants in twelve grams of lunar soil brought back by the Apollo missions, using two types of soil.

IMAGE: Rob Ferl, left, and Anna-Lisa Paul looking at the plates filled part with lunar soil and part with control soils, now under LED growing lights. At the time, the scientists did not know if the seeds would even germinate in lunar soil. CREDIT: UF/IFAS photo by Tyler Jones

Researchers continue to try and figure out how life could work on the Moon. Obviously, we’re not talking about a place where there was once liquid water that could have seeped underground and possibly sustained microbes. But when we talk about building a lunar base, we need to think about becoming self-sustaining, and that means being able to grow our own plants.

And now, scientists have successfully grown plants using just twelve grams of lunar soil.

It turns out that we don’t have a lot of lunar samples on hand, and what we have gets divvied out very carefully, so twelve grams is all the team got. They used it to their advantage, however, by creating single-gram, thimble-sized planters. Each planter got some nutrient solution and a few seeds of a plant called Arabidopsis. The genetic code for this particular plant has been completely mapped out, so the scientists could examine the results down to the expression in the genetic makeup.

Almost all of the twelve tiny pots sprouted plants.