Plants can grow on the Moon despite intense sunlight, radiation and reduced gravity: this good news in view of future human bases is provided by the results of the first ‘lunar garden’ created by the Chinese Chang’e-4 mission in 2019, published more than four years later in the journal Acta Astronautica by the team led by GengXin Xie of Chongqing University.
The Bep (Biological Experiment Payload) experiment, designed by 28 Chinese universities, marked an important moment for space exploration, because it was the first to make life sprout on a celestial body other than Earth. It was a cotton seedling, born from one of the seeds brought to the hidden side of our satellite by the Chinese Chang’e-4 mission in January 2019. The cotton seeds were kept in a mini greenhouse of almost 3 kilos together with seeds of potato, rapeseed, Arabidopsis (a flowering plant), yeast and fruit fly eggs. The objective was in fact to recreate a small biosphere, a sort of artificial and autonomous ecosystem with which to test the possibility of cultivating on the Moon. Sunlight would have allowed plants to photosynthesize to produce oxygen and nutrients, while yeasts would have decomposed waste from plants and midges, producing additional nutrients for the ecosystem.
The experiment, which started well with the first cotton shoots, was then abruptly interrupted after nine days instead of the 100 expected due to the arrival of the lunar night: the frost in fact killed the cotton seedlings, as well as preventing germination of potatoes and the hatching of midge eggs.
In light of these findings, Chinese researchers believe it is possible to build a regenerative ecosystem on the Moon to establish human bases, although there is still much to be done to develop systems capable of withstanding the cold lunar nights and to test the healthiness of the cultivated products.
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Source: Ansa
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