NASA: Green Mars Project

You might have heard of or watched "The Martian," which explores the idea of humans living on Mars in the future. To make this vision a reality, we would need to grow our own food, which is no easy task given Mars' harsh environment. Unlike Earth, Mars doesn't naturally support a variety of crops. However, NASA and other space agencies are working on solutions to these challenges by conducting experiments in their laboratories. Their goal is to find ways on how we can cultivate food on Mars without any issues. Let's dig into this topic and get to the root of it!

Challenges of Space Exploration

Space exploration has extraordinary challenges, such as ensuring astronauts' health and providing reliable food sources that would give enough protein and vitamins a human body needs. As NASA advances their missions beyond our orbit, researchers like Dr. Gioia Massa is developing sustainable solutions for our food systems for space. She has contributed to understanding how plants grow in microgravity, finding a solution for fresh produce on long-duration space flights. Her interest sparked when she visited the NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at the age of 12, leading to pursue a doctorate in plant biology and work with NASA (NASA’S Postdoctoral Program). 

Conducting Experiments

Future astronauts exploring mars could grow crops in dirt to avoid relying on resupply missions and to grow varieties of good with hydroponics (cultivation of plants in nutrient-enriched water) but new lab experiments only further approve that growing food on the “Red Planet” would be complicated due to the lack of vitamins and minerals of mars dirt. Researchers then planted lettuce and weed (Arabidopsis thaliana) in three kinds of replicas of mars dirt. Two of the materials were mined from Hawaii or the Mojave Desert (similar properties of Mars) and created a similar environment of mars surface by using the image caught from the “Curiosity rover”. The result showed that the lettuce and weed survived in the marslike soils but both of them could not grow on the synthetic dirt. The original synthetic dirt did not include calcium perchlorate (toxic salt that makes up 2% of Martian soil).

Growing Rice on the Red Planet?

Martian dirt may have the proper necessities for growing rice, which is in fact one of humankind’s MOST important foods, planetary scientist Abhilash Ramachandran noticed that the plant may need more support to survive amid perchlorate (a chemical that is toxic to plants). Ramachandran and his team grew rice in Martian-like soil made of Mojave Desert basalt. Their experiment included growing rice in pure potting mix and several other potting mix were watered once/twice a day. Rice plants did in fact grow in the synthetic Mars dirt however the plants developed slighter and wispier roots than the plants that sprouted from the potting mix and hybrid soils. Then they tried to grow the plant with perchlorate included in the soil. They included a wild rice variety and two cultivars with genetic mutation.

Revolution in Space Agriculture: NASA Veggie System 

Massa’s early work involved developing “Veggie”, a plant growth chamber that is designed for a similar environment in outer space. Veggie uses LED light and plant pillows that are filled with a clay-based growth media (providing water, nutrients, and air). Not only does this system support growth for varieties of plants (such as lettuce and zinnias) but examines how moisture levels would affect the plants health. Research also supports Advanced Plant Habitat (APH) on the International Space Station (ISS), where an automated growth chamber that includes 180 sensors. By improving crop resilience and productivity in difficult climates by having proper insights from space agriculture research, NASA’s investment in plant research proves the potential for cultivating crops in space and their genetic changes in plants under microgravity.

Designer plants:

NASA’s funded scientists designed plants that can survive the most harsh conditions on Mars by combining traits such as cold tolerance from arctic bacteria and including ultraviolet resistance from high-altitude tomato plants. These designer (engineered) plants could provide the essentials (oxygen,fresh food,medicine). Research sponsored by NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (a.k.a NIAC), goal is to create plants that would thrive in Martian greenhouse (protecting them from the uninhabited planet’s extreme conditions). This project was led by Dr.Wendy Boss and Dr.Amy Gruden from NC state University where they used gene splicing to add traits that were from extremophiles (organisms that thrive in extreme environment conditions) to ordinary plants. Others were discovered like finding stress-resistant genes from a deep sea microbe into tobacco cells. These researches not only have potential for surviving on Mars but also in improving Earth’s crop resilience.

Finding solutions:

Edward Guinan, an astrobiologist at Villanova University in Pennsylvania suggested that bacteria on Earth enjoy perchlorates as food, and when they eat the salt, they give oxygen in return. If these bacteria were taken to Mars to feed off the perchlorates in the Martian dirt then they could not only get rid of the toxic component but could also produce oxygen for astronauts.

The article ends here but the story still continues. The vision of living on Mars and the possibility of exploring more planets could only be possible by starting off with one question, “what if”. The idea of growing crops on a planet that is only filled with volcanic rocks and dust, we could still have the possibility of growing plants and bringing life despite the odds being against us.

Post by:

Paarvi Rathi