Earlier this week, the most obvious scientific news in recent memory was reported: there's Uranium on the Moon.
This has been, pretty much, a slam-dunk since Apollo 11. Why? Because we've brought moonrocks back to Earth, and we've analyzed them thoroughly. What did we find? That they're made of the same stuff that Earth-rocks are made of!
I mean, not that that isn't interesting. None of the other rocky bodies in our Solar System have the same composition as Earth, which helped lead us to the understanding that the Moon was made out of the same stuff that made Earth. In fact, one of the coolest biological things (to an astrophysicist) that was done recently was the crushing of moonrocks into a sandy dust, followed by planting seeds in them and watering them. The result?
Marigolds! You can grow certain hardy plants in the soil on the Moon; just add air and water!
So, my question is this: what about other worlds? Say, this one:
We land stuff there. We land highly advanced, mostly autonomous robots there. Mars has some atmosphere; is that enough to grow things? Anything? Mars may be able to support water for short periods of time. If not, we could always bring a pressurized terrarium, and use the Martian soil:
It would be such a curious thing to do, to simply test, firsthand, whether Mars can sustain life or not. Furthermore, it seems easy to do, like this could be a small, standalone thing to piggy-back on the next Mars mission. Can you think of a reason why we shouldn't and/or couldn't do this?
Physical Science
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Of course we should! In the Solar System Mars is our second step, the first being the Moon. And by step I mean not Buz Aldrin, I mean terraforming and collonization.
There should be a lot more research done on such things...
Posted by: RF | July 3, 2009 2:43 AM
Hehehe; I enjoy visiting the nearby Deep Space Communications Complex and if there happens to be a geologist with me that's even better. When they notice the moonrock and start blabbering about it I say "ah, it looks like the rock I kicked out of my driveway this morning."
Can we grow stuff on Mars? Well, if it's sandy then of course we can. If it's all clay that would be a problem. If it has the requisite trace minerals for plants, fantastic - but otherwise a nice sterile sand is also perfect because we can use water with the necessary trace minerals and ions. So my perspective as a chemist is that we only need a good chemical analysis of the available substrates and some characterization of the material bulk (what type of rocks are there). No need to plant anything despite the fact that it would be awesome to stare at the first signs of plant life on an alien world. I imagine such an experiment will require its own lander though; I suspect it will be too bulky and risky to other experiments to be deployed as one big package.
Nights (especially in winter) could be a problem though; there aren't enough "greenhouse gases" in the atmosphere to prevent a large plunge in temperature when the sun is below the horizon, but I guess we can put the marigolds in a triple-glazed vacuum tight pot. On second thought, scrap the marigolds for something that sprouts quickly.
I think the Biosphere 2 experiment (despite all scientific criticism of it) had demonstrated that it would be quite a challenge to achieve some measure of autonomy in a small enclosed system. Perhaps if it can be demonstrated that the ISS can be supplied oxygen via algae and that the oxygen generators will only be needed in emergencies then we can start thinking about things like moon bases. I'd put an airlock between the humans and the plants though; you don't want respiring plants making humans feel tired and sick.
Posted by: MadScientist | July 3, 2009 3:31 AM
Isn't there a risk that there is already some form of indigenous life on Mars (say a lichen or even just bacteria). Sending an Earth life form there might upset the balance of nature on Mars and stifle life forms that might have a better chance in the long run of populating that planet.
I like the idea, except that I think there is an ethical question of us sending Earth life to Mars before we know more about that planet. There is an air of "Well, we've screwed up our own planet, let's do the same for Mars".
Posted by: toby | July 3, 2009 3:57 AM
Well, some of the results from the Phoenix mission indicated perchlorate in the Martian soil, which isn't likely to be conducive to plant growth. The atmosphere isn't nrealy thick enough (on Earth it would be called a pretty good lab vacuum, IIRC) and there's no protection from either solar UV or cosmic rays.
And if you're talking about sustainable gardening, then the question becomes a lot more complex. Soil isn't just an inert medium, it's a complex and dynamic ecosystem. Without the whole panoply of micro-organisms to regulate the bio-availability of nutrients, fix nitrogen, etc, you'd probably be better off growing hydroponically.
Posted by: Dunc | July 3, 2009 5:26 AM
Oh, and while the experiment with moonrocks clearly does show you can grow marigolds in the medium, they're the scrawniest and least healthy-looking plants I've ever seen that were still alive.
Posted by: Dunc | July 3, 2009 5:31 AM
Well, one reason that we might hesitate is for purposes of preservation; I remember reading Red Mars and being struck by the argument that terraforming (or even just significantly altering) the Martian surface amounted to a willful destruction of a unique environment that one could never get back.
In other words, you might not want to seed Mars with life for the same reason we try to preserve the barren and beautiful rock formations in Arizona.
That said, I don't think putting a few marigolds in a terrarium represents much in the way of ruining the Martian biosphere. Not much potential for a Marigold revolution.
Posted by: Andrew | July 3, 2009 6:45 AM
I have to say that I'm not overly concerned about the innate 'rights' of Martian microbial life.
But I damn well want to know that it's there and that whether it's independent of life as we know, before we start mucking up the environment over there.
Posted by: Sili
| July 3, 2009 10:29 AM
Can you think of a reason why we shouldn't and/or couldn't do this?
Yes. We are out of money. Sorry.
Hugs,
The POTUS
Posted by: Barack Obama | July 3, 2009 11:53 AM
Wow, I would love to chill on Mars! That would be SO cool!
RT
www.anonymize.tk
Posted by: Johnny James | July 3, 2009 12:20 PM
Nope. Mars doesn't generate a strong enough magnetic field to protect its atmosphere from solar wind stripping.
No atmosphere, no terraform, no flowers.
Posted by: Jordan Hall | July 3, 2009 12:38 PM
There was a movie where they grew plants on Mars. It had a robot dog in it... I think about growing plants up there every day... to fulfill my dream of being a space farmer...
Posted by: Alfred | July 3, 2009 12:41 PM
no I don't think we should try to garden on mars, unless it's strictly indoors. even if mars atmosphere was made up of strictly carbon dioxide, the plants would not thrive. why may you ask? 2 reasons. weather and temperature. mars temperatures are far too high or far too low for plants to survive. plants aren't evolved to handle going from -100 to 200 degrees in a single day or even at all. then there's the storms that would wipe all plant life off of the planet.
if you meant indoors, yes we could garden on mars but we wouldn't be using soil to do it. it would all be done hydroponically or aeroponically. no serious space farming would be done using soil. period.
Posted by: truth | July 3, 2009 12:51 PM
Don't do that ... not yet at least... you don't want to plant anything on mars when there is a still an open question that micro-life lives on the planet currently... this will cause all sorts of problems in the next 30 to 50 years when people are wondering if the life found on mars existed their prior.. or showed up because we planted it...
I'm not talking the plants we put on mars... I'm talking the bacteria that is on the plants when we send them up...
Posted by: Roger Wehbe | July 3, 2009 1:04 PM
Should Martian life be discovered one can hope it is truly exotic, clearly distinct from anything found on Earth. Not only would it give biologists a benchmark for comparison, it would demonstrate that life will appear anywhere the conditions are right. But there is no guarantee Martian life will be alien. It might closely resemble terrestrial life. Given that life on Earth uses only a small number of all possible amino acids it would almost certainly mean a common origin. Since Martian landers are sterilized the chance of Earth microbe contamination is minimized. This leaves panspermia as a likely explanation. Unless a plant grow kit can also be properly cleaned it should be left out of any future unmanned missions. And a manned mission, which cannot avoid contaminating its surroundings, should wait until robotic missions have been used to their fullest.
Posted by: Lenard Lindstrom | July 3, 2009 1:07 PM
Instead of going to all the expense of messing with someone else's mission (finger in the air guess your experiment would have to come with $100M for a PI to accept it) and mucking up the planetary protection protocols, couldn't you grind up a Martian meteorite?
Posted by: Vagueofgodalming | July 3, 2009 1:35 PM
But what about this?
"The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds" ?
(A 1964 play written by Paul Zindel, a playwright and science teacher.)
Posted by: marktime | July 3, 2009 1:47 PM
But what about this?
"The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds".
(A 1964 play written by Paul Zindel, a playwright and science teacher, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Drama)
Posted by: marktime | July 3, 2009 1:51 PM
Oops, apologies for the double post.
Posted by: marktime | July 3, 2009 1:58 PM
Nope. Mars doesn't generate a strong enough magnetic field to protect its atmosphere from solar wind stripping.
No atmosphere, no terraform, no flowers.
Now, forgive me for not knowing this offhand, but wouldn't it be possible to "terraform" Mars if your terraforming plan *including* continuously pumping gases into the atmosphere to counter the solar wind? That is to say, if you resigned yourself to not having a stable environment.
I mean, if you're talking about changing the environment of an entire planet, can it really be unreasonable to consider maintaining said environment once you've got it?
Or is the rate of atmospheric loss simply too high to even consider that?
Posted by: Andrew | July 3, 2009 1:59 PM
"Can you think of a reason why we shouldn't and/or couldn't do this?"
Ask the people of the SouthEast USofA if they like Kudzu.
Have you ever seen a mature Chessnut tree? Chestnut trees are all but gone. How about city streets totally closed over by Elm trees. Elms used to be (one of) the major trees in cities--now they barely survive. We in the NorthEast and upper MidWest are currently having problems with bugs killing the Ash trees. How many animals have the Australians imported? How many Hawaiin native species have vanished because of imported rats?
There is a reason that space probes are sterilized (however poorly) before being sent to another world.
As one poster already said: NOT YET!
Posted by: Neil A Benson | July 3, 2009 2:17 PM
Why is everyone so concerned about harming the Martian ecosystem?? There are billions of planets like Mars that don't naturally support much life if any. First and foremost there are no sentient beings on Mars so who cares if we change it.
Mars is ours for the taking. Lets make the best out of what resources we have and not waste time arguing over the ethics of terraforming a lifeless desert.
Posted by: Jon | July 3, 2009 4:24 PM
The Moon makes no sense. It's soil is highly abrasive and thus wears down most man-made materials. And it seems to possibly have tiny traces of water. Water is very heavy and thus expensive to supply from Earth.
Mars makes a lot of sense. Its soil is not only non-abrasive but very alkaline--aka excellent for growing vegetables. The perclorates found in the Martian soil were found over about 3 inches of (likely mud) that covers a vast frozen ocean over the north pole. In other words, it very likely comes from the salty (perclorate filled) sea it blankets. These perclorates not only require much lower temperatures to freeze but are also very rich in oxygen.
On the other hand, burried glaciers have been identified in the equitorial regions. That means non-salty ice and non-salty soils that should be exceptional for gardening.
The plan:
(1) land supplies over an equitorial glacier for the main settlement.
(2) send people to melt out a habitat and using wind power to separate hydrogen and oxygen out of the resulting waters for fuel. This can easily melt rock and iron.
(3) build steal milling facilities and start building the hull's of new space craft. Using hydrogen/oxygen, rocket them back to Earth orbit (with water, too) where life support systems can be installed.
Mars' gravity is 38% that of Earth and should take far less energy to launch rockets. This makes Mars a great potential stepping stone for other destinations. It should be the shipyard that supplies an armada of spacecraft for other solar exploits, such as the harvesting of precious metals and ice from various known objects throughout the solar system.
Also--the soil over the glacier should protect from harmful solar radiation and insulate from the extreme cold. I'd use natural spectrum LED lighting within the glacial facility to do my gardening. And brushless (magnetically levitated) wind turbines for power generation, as they require very little maintenance and produce some 20% more electricity. LED lights use little power and last a very long time. And don't send any batteries--use ultracapacitors instead. They are readily available and last also a very very long time.
Posted by: Matthew C. Tedder | July 3, 2009 5:38 PM
Hold on buster. Not yet. first we have to determine if life exists or existed on Mars in it's pure state, before we potentially contaminate it with biomass from earth. Don't get me wrong I'm all for terra forming Mars, but there are more important questions that must be answered first. Is there life on Mars? Was there life on Mars? Is there life everywhere in the Cosmos?
Posted by: Mike Brito | July 3, 2009 6:25 PM
Is the earth so screwed up that we're planning to even put a 'biosphere' sort of a terrarium in Mars ? If Earth would heat-up due to global warming or freeze due to yet another ice age, don't you think the conditions for life to thrive on earth will be the same as that of mars? Just take care of earth and leave mars alone.
Posted by: ryan | July 3, 2009 7:12 PM
@toby: no living organism can exist in isolation - if you have one bug you have a gazillion bugs; odds are also extremely good that you'll have very many types of bugs. The martian soil looks pretty bare so far (so as far as we know, no cellular organisms). If there was life in the past we would need to find a likely spot and dig for evidence; perhaps all the life there is buried under a few hundred million years of accumulated dust from meteors. At any rate the landers, despite all the case in assembly and transport, have probably brought their own microbes.
@Andrew: What's to preserve on Mars? If it can be transformed that would be awesome. At the moment we can't even manage our own planet. As for the atmosphere, the reason Mars hasn't got much of one is that the gravity is too low; with the temperatures reached during the day many gas molecules can reach escape velocity. Gas would literally escape to space quicker than you can pump it out. Any martian base would have to be completely sealed.
@Dunc: perchlorates aren't good for plants in high concentration, but depending on what perchlorate it is, it may be a source of oxygen or a useful CO2 scrubber.
Posted by: MadScientist | July 4, 2009 12:19 AM
What's to preserve on Mars?
You're right that there's no life to preserve.
But, for example, the barren alkali flats of the continental U.S. are often reserved for their natural, if lifeless, beauty. Would the Racetrack Playa be greatly improved by an irrigation system and plants? "The Wave" in Arizona is a lifeless sandstone formation, but we preserve it from even casual hiking - it's so unique and valuable that the state of Arizona limits permits to walk along it to the tens per year.
Just because it lacks life doesn't mean it lacks beauty or is uninteresting, or is even uninformative.
There's also the fact, as others have pointed out, that introducing life to Mars before the question of whether life existed prior to our exploration of the plant could potentially be spoiled; I don't actually think that's much of a danger, but it's a valid concern to at least think about.
Generally, though, I think that if we actually come to the point where it's the survival of humanity or the preservation of an alien desert, I know which one I'd pick. I just don't think we need to make that choice just yet.
Posted by: Andrew | July 4, 2009 7:45 AM
Oh, and thank you, MadScientist, for explaining the difficulty in producing a Martian atmosphere.
Posted by: Andrew | July 4, 2009 7:48 AM
@Andrew: These places on earth can be left as is and visited by people; I can't imagine enough people on Mars to make any more than the tiniest of changes - at the very least not for thousands of years. Human cities on Mars would have to be very large indeed to make any difference to how we see Mars from earth. Let's say we had a Martian tourist resort - all you need to do is travel outside the city and you'll see the vast largely unmodified Martian terrain - so what is lost?
Maybe we should start collecting asteroids and dumping them on Mars - in a few million years we may have bulked up Mars enough to hold an atmosphere. :) I'm not sure where we earthlings will get the necessary resources or be able to recycle resources to keep up the operation though.
Posted by: MadScientist | July 4, 2009 6:01 PM
Let's say we had a Martian tourist resort - all you need to do is travel outside the city and you'll see the vast largely unmodified Martian terrain - so what is lost?
Actually, that's exactly my question. Who knows if we picked a unique and/or irreplaceable spot to plop down our interplanetary condo and gardening center? :P
Posted by: Andrew | July 4, 2009 10:46 PM
Gadzooks!
Great Marigolds! but I think we have to go back to biology 101 for this one old boy.
Isn't it that you need to a) have a decent substrate to plant on, so that's a possibility b) need CO2 at a certain level, and therefore a stable atmosphere for the plants to fix carbohydrates, a biosphere could be the only way to go for this in the short term c) water at a certain temperature to remain liquid enough for the plants to sup on. d) enough light.
Oh and it not to vary quite so wildly between the temps of 30 and minus -150 Celsius, Marigolds along with most plants don't like that.
So that's a No we shouldn't grow Marigolds on Mars.
http://weirdimals.wordpress.com/
Posted by: Sir Pilkington | July 5, 2009 12:07 AM
The presence of the oxidizers in the Mars surface soil will require us to first redo the Viking experiments. Since most experiments were of the "heat sample, analyze gases of organics" variety, what you really got was "heat sample, oxidize the crap of any organics, find only CO2".
As for terraforming, since Mars has a so much lower gravity than earth, it will never be able to hold on to a nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere. It might have had one, but all that's left now is the CO2.
Posted by: Mu | July 6, 2009 8:11 AM
Great post as always, Ethan. Your idea to grow a plant on Mars is not unique. Others have proposed it before. For example, when The Mars Society was founded in 1998 they discussed that very thing as one of their possible main projects (They ended up starting FMARS and MDRS instead.). One of the Google Lunar X PRIZE teams (Odyssey Moon, I think) plans to bring a plant in a sealed container to the Moon.
Posted by: Brian Shiro | July 7, 2009 11:31 PM
I'm slightly alarmed at the number of people in this thread who don't seem to realise that plants need O2 to respire, as well as CO2 to photosynthesise...
Posted by: Dunc | July 8, 2009 1:52 AM
An awesome idea, looking more into this. Should we plant certain soils (after testing in a vacuum with the soil and the air composed of the same conditions as those on mars). Planting there and depositing carbon dioxide produced from other sources, we could thicken the atmosphere and produce oxygens via plants. Skip the early stages of life production that take a bajillion years.
An idea based on general theory, obviously not all aspects/variables are covered but it would be neat.
Posted by: HPrime | July 8, 2009 11:12 AM
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Posted by: DHRUV | August 12, 2009 10:18 PM
Yes. The rovers on Mars have found that the soil is alkaline. You could grow asparagus in it.
Posted by: Red Fox | August 26, 2009 5:01 AM