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Published May 12, 2022 11:32AM
Updated 11:34AM
Science
Associated Press"Holy cow. Plants actually grow in lunar stuff. Are you kidding me?" said Robert Ferl of the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.
Ferl and his colleagues planted thale cress in moon soil returned by Apollo 11′s Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, and other moonwalkers. The good news: All of the seeds sprouted.
"Holy cow. Plants actually grow in lunar stuff. Are you kidding me?" said Robert Ferl of the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.
Ferl and his colleagues planted thale cress in moon soil returned by Apollo 11′s Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, and other moonwalkers. The good news: All of the seeds sprouted.
... Results were published Thursday in Communications Biology.
The longer the soil was exposed to punishing cosmic radiation and solar wind on the moon, the worse the plants seemed to do. The Apollo 11 samples — exposed a couple billion years longer to the elements because of the Sea of Tranquility’s older surface — were the least conducive for growth, according to scientists.
... "This is a big step forward to know that you can grow plants," said Simon Gilroy, a space plant biologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who had no role in the study. "The real next step is to go and do it on the surface of the moon."
Updated 11:34AM
Science
Associated Press"Holy cow. Plants actually grow in lunar stuff. Are you kidding me?" said Robert Ferl of the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.
Ferl and his colleagues planted thale cress in moon soil returned by Apollo 11′s Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, and other moonwalkers. The good news: All of the seeds sprouted.
"Holy cow. Plants actually grow in lunar stuff. Are you kidding me?" said Robert Ferl of the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.
Ferl and his colleagues planted thale cress in moon soil returned by Apollo 11′s Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, and other moonwalkers. The good news: All of the seeds sprouted.
... Results were published Thursday in Communications Biology.
The longer the soil was exposed to punishing cosmic radiation and solar wind on the moon, the worse the plants seemed to do. The Apollo 11 samples — exposed a couple billion years longer to the elements because of the Sea of Tranquility’s older surface — were the least conducive for growth, according to scientists.
... "This is a big step forward to know that you can grow plants," said Simon Gilroy, a space plant biologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who had no role in the study. "The real next step is to go and do it on the surface of the moon."
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