Local

Melbourne institute studying ‘Martian garden' for farm on the red planet

MELBOURNE, Fla. — The Florida Tech Buzz Aldrin Space Institute in Melbourne has teamed up with NASA to develop a “Martian garden” to determine which crops would best survive in a farm on the red planet.

When a manned mission to Mars does happen sometime in the future, astronauts will have prepackaged food for the nearly two-and-a-half year mission, but being able to grow food will be important, NASA said.

“Stowing space-saving seeds to grow one’s own food provides extra nutrition and even increases morale by sprouting a glimpse of home while millions of miles away from earth,” the space agency said in a release.

%

INLINE

%

The challenge of growing crops on Mars is the lack of soil – the planet’s surface is made up of crushed volcanic rock with no organic material.

“Soil, by definition, contains organics; it has held plant life, insects, worms,” Kennedy Space Center food production senior project manager Ralph Fritsche said. “Mars doesn’t really have soil.”

So far, researchers have grown lettuce in simulated Martian soil, and over the course of the nine-month experiment, radishes, Swiss chard, kale, Chinese cabbage, snow peas, dwarf peppers and tomatoes will be included.

A preliminary report on the experiment is expected to be done by mid-January with a final report to follow in March.

0