For the first time, scientists have successfully grown plants in lunar soil brought back to Earth by NASA’s Apollo astronauts. Researchers had no idea if anything would sprout(发芽) in the harsh moon dirt and wanted to see if it could be used to grow food by the next generation of lunar explorers.
“After two days, they started to sprout!” said Anna-Lisa Paul, a professor in Horticultural Sciences at the University of Florida, who took part in the experiment. “Everything sprouted. I can’t tell you how astonished we were! Every plant—whether in a lunar sample or in a control(参照实验)—looked the same up until about day six.”
Robert Ferl of the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences and his colleagues planted thale cress(鼠耳芥) in moon soil returned by Apollo 11’s Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, and other moon walkers. All of the seeds sprouted. But within a week, the coarseness(粗糙度) and other properties of the lunar soil stressed the small, flowering weeds so much that they grew more slowly than seedlings planted in dirt from Earth. Most of the moon plants ended up stunted(发育不良).
The longer the soil was exposed to tough cosmic radiation and solar wind on the moon, the worse the plants seemed to do. The Apollo 11 samples—exposed a couple of billion years longer to the elements—were the least likely for plants to grow, scientists said. One solution might be to use younger geologic spots(地质点) on the moon, like lava flows, for digging up planting soil. The environment also could be improved, changing the nutrient mixture or adjusting the artificial lighting.
NASA said the timing for such an experiment was finally right, with the space agency looking to put astronauts back on the moon in a few years. The ideal situation would be for future astronauts to make use of the endless supply of available local dirt for indoor planting rather than set up a hydroponic(水培的) or all-water system, scientists said. “The fact that anything grew means that we have a really good starting point, and now the question is how do we optimize and improve,” said Sharmila Bhattacharya, NASA’s program scientist for space biology.
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