Researchers had no idea if anything would sprout in harsh moon dirt and wanted to see if it could be used to grow food by the next generation of lunar explorers. The results stunned them.
Highlights
- Researchers had no idea if anything would sprout in the harsh moon dirt and wanted to see if it could be used to grow food by the next generation of lunar explorers.
- The downside was that after the first week, the coarseness and other properties of the lunar soil stressed the small, flowering weeds so much that they grew more slowly than seedlings planted in fake moon dirt from Earth.
- The longer the soil was exposed to punishing cosmic radiation and solar wind on the moon, the worse the plants seemed to do.
- NASA hopes to recycle their lunar soil later this year, planting more thale cress before possibly moving on to other vegetation.