NASA May Grow Plants on Mars by 2021

Researchers at NASA have proposed that a greenhouse be carried aboard the agency’s next rover in order to study plant growth on the surface of Mars.

Although NASA’s next Martian rover isn’t set to arrive on the red planet until 2020, the Mars Plant Experiment (MPX) is designed to determine whether agriculture is even possible on Mars. While some might caution that introducing plants into the Martian environment could potentially destroy any preexisting ecosystem, NASA’s team has no intention of setting seed down in terra firma.

In fact, the MPX proposal would see the seeds of a small flowing plant, Arabidopsis, carried aboard the 2020 rover germinate and grow within an airtight greenhouse. Once the rover touched down and finished its systems checks, water would be introduced to the soil and seed laden greenhouse. Filled with Earth-born oxygen the seeds would hopefully germinate and grow, regardless of their exposure to Mars’ intense solar radiation and lower gravity.

“In order to do a long-term, sustainable base on Mars, you would want to be able to establish that plants can at least grow on Mars," said Heather Smith, MPX Deputy Principal Investigator. "This would be the first step in that … we just send the seeds there and watch them grow."

If all goes according to plan, within 15 days researchers back on Earth would begin to see signs of active plant growth, alerting scientists that Mars’ environment might not be a complete hindrance to agriculture. If plants could grow within greenhouses on Mars, sustained human settlement of the planet might be possible. With sustained settlement you get colonization, and possibly a responsible form of terraforming that comingles Martian life (if there is any) with our native flora – but that’s many, many decades away.

If the MPX does make it aboard NASA’s next-gen rover it could hasten the launch of commercial colonization. Should NASA prove terrestrial methods of agriculture can be successfully exported to another planet, I believe the likelihood of commercial Martian colonization will increase dramatically, as would the timeline for the first human on Mars.

Images Courtesy of NASA, Chris McKay & the MPX Proposal Team

Source: Space.com