Farming in space might be closer to the future than you may have thought, as NASA’s ongoing research could make agriculture feasible from the Moon or Mars within the coming decades. The challenge is figuring out how to farm when there is no soil to start with.
Photo Credit – NASA
Farming Without Soil
As NASA prepares for long missions to the Moon and eventually Mars, there has been extensive research on how plants can be grown in space. Astronauts have found ways to grow crops from the International Space Station (ISS). NASA has a veggie system that grows plants in small plant pillows with a clay-based growing medium. Other experiments like NASA’s XROOTS have tested hydroponics and aeroponics, which grow plants using water or air rather than using soil. (NASA, 2023)
But NASA researchers are also looking further ahead, toward actually creating agricultural soil.
The material covering the Moon and Mars is called regolith. It is essentially broken rock, rather than the living soil farmers depend on here on Earth. Lunar regolith is extremely fine and abrasive, while Martian regolith contains perchlorate salts that can be harmful to plants. Both lack the organic matter that makes Earth’s soil a productive growing environment. (NASA, 2022)
In order for space farmers to grow plants and farm in space, they are going to have to do something farmers rarely think about, they are going to have to build the soil before they can farm it.
Turning Regolith into A Growing Medium
Photo Credit – NASA
Researchers are investigating whether microorganisms could help. A NASA funded project at Arizona State University is studying how microorganisms could weather Martian regolith, remove or transform harmful compounds and help generate organic and nutrient rich material capable of supporting plant growth. The project is specifically investigating the biological processes involved in creating soil from Martian regolith. (NASA, 2023)
Other research is exploring how biological systems could gradually transform regolith into a more useful growing medium. The goal is to recreate some of the biological processes that make Earth’s soil function.
Plants Are Already Growing In Lunar Material
Photo Credit – NASA
There is already evidence that plants can grow in lunar material. In 2022, researchers successfully germinated and grew Arabidopsis thaliana in lunar regolith returned by the Apollo missions. The plants were smaller and less robust than those grown in Earth soil, but they survived and grew, proving that lunar material has the potential to become part of future agricultural systems. (NASA, 2022)
The Challenge of Sustainable Space Agriculture
The challenge is making those systems sustainable.
Sending everything needed for a farm from Earth would be expensive and difficult. A future lunar or Martian agricultural system could instead use local resources, recycle water and nutrients, and gradually incorporate processed regolith into its growing systems. NASA describes the development of new growth media, including both hydroponics and ways of making planetary regolith more useful for plants, as an important part of its space crop research.
What Space Farming Could Teach Agriculture on Earth
This research also offers a different way of thinking about agriculture on Earth.
Farmers already manage complex systems involving soil, water, nutrients, microorganisms and plants. Space agriculture takes those same relationships and removes the natural advantages Earth provides. Researchers have to understand each component and figure out how to rebuild the system from the ground up.
Photo Credit – NASA
In that sense, the future of farming may not just be about growing crops in new places is about understanding the systems that make agriculture possible in the first place. Whether that knowledge is eventually used to grow an eggplant on the Moon, a tomato on Mars or improve how we manage difficult soils here on Earth, space agriculture could push agricultural technology in directions that benefit farmers beyond the edge of Earth.
Sources:
NASA. 2023. Station Science 101: Plant Research. https://www.nasa.gov/missions/station/ways-the-international-space-station-helps-us-study-plant-growth-in-space/
NASA. May 12, 2022. Scientists Grow Plants in Lunar Soil. Station Science 101: Plant Research – NASA
NASA. May 21, 2023. EFRI ELiS: Bioweathering Dynamics and Ecophysiology of Microbially Catalyzed Soil Genesis of Martian Regolith. EFRI ELiS: Bioweathering Dynamics and Ecophysiology of Microbially Catalyzed Soil Genesis of Martian Regolith – NASA Science