Science experiments going to the Moon on Artemis I

BBC News has an interesting article this morning about scientists that have managed to grow marigolds in crushed moon rock. Apparently with the right combination of bacteria they can extract the nutrients they need from the rock. Which, in my mind, proves that organic gardening is the way to go – it’s the only method that preserves the soil ecosystem that plants obviously rely on to thrive.

Whether or not that old packet of seeds will germinate is a question that often arises in gardening. But when the seeds in question have taken a trip to the International Space Station (ISS), the answer gets a bit more complicated. In 2015, a million rocket (AKA arugula) seeds blasted off to spend six months in space. When they returned to Earth in 2016 they faced an even larger challenge – they were to be sown by a horde of little fingers as the RHS Rocket Science experiment turned school children into space gardeners!

The first draft of my essay is done, and although I will revisit it in due course before the deadline, I thought I would take a few minutes to write a blog post that I have been pondering for some time now.

Three minutes of loveliness

An ethnobotany superhero by night, my mild-mannered daytime alter ego is a science writer for the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), one of the UK’s research councils. It’s not often that those two worlds collide, although during the early summer the campus I work on is dotted with the blooms of hardy orchids.

A little while ago, I told you about a preliminary experiment that Dr Wieger Wamelink and his team at the University of Wageningen conducted. It demonstrated that it is possible to grow plants in simulated Mars and Moon soils. 

Growing lettuce on the Moon is a step closer, as a French start-up has successfully grown lettuce in simulated lunar soil.

On Thursday I pottered out into the garden and planted some tea bags. This isn’t because I have some loony idea that they’ll grow into tea plants (you were wondering that, weren’t you?) – it’s all in the name of soil science.

Just over a year ago, when we were celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first Moon landing, I talked about the lack of diversity in space and mentioned Mary Jackson. In 2016, the movie Hidden Figures shared the stories of Mary Jackson and two other Black female mathematicians – Katherine Johnson and, Dorothy Vaughan. They worked at NASA when a ‘computer’ still meant a person carrying out mathematical calculations. The film is based on a book by Margot Lee Shetterly, which I am reading at the moment. The book offers a more detailed and accurate account of the prejudice these women (and others) had to overcome.

Can we grow food on the Moon or Mars? That was the question that started Dr Wieger Wamelink, ecologist and exobiologist at the University of Wageningen in the Netherlands, on a research quest in 2013.

Gardeners of the Galaxy has completed its first solar orbit! Join Emma the Space Gardener for a birthday celebration and learn how GotG got started, hear the story of a space plants experiment you’ll never forget, and find out which plant Emma would choose to take into space.

A year ago, the first seeds sprouted on the Moon. China’s Chang’e-4 mission was the first to land on the far side of the Moon, which faces away from Earth. The lander carried a sealed container filled with soil, cotton, rapeseed, Arabidopsis (rock cress) and potato seeds, yeast and fruit fly eggs. The aim of the experiment was to form an artificial, self-sustaining environment – a mini biosphere. The six components were chosen to act “producers, consumers and decomposers”, with the plants producing oxygen and food to sustain the fruit flies. The yeast was to process waste from the flies the dead plants to create more insect food.