Scientists Recreated Martian Soil to See if Anything Will Grow in It
The soil is described as “crusty.”
With Elon Musk’s SpaceX scheduled—though certainly not confirmed—to fly to Mars sometime within the next decade, our thoughts naturally turn to agriculture on the red planet.
Martian exploration and possibly settlement have become less sci-fi pipe dreams, and more scientific reality pipe dreams, which is a marked improvement in the actual likelihood of them happening. Assuming humans want to visit Mars for anything more than a quick visit (and incredibly long trip), agriculture of some sort is going to be essential.
Agriculture has been a fundamental part of space exploration for as long as humans have been venturing outside of Earth’s atmosphere; Russian cosmonauts have been growing and eating their own romaine lettuce for decades. But Mars offers something unusual: we know, for example, that its surface soil contains many nutrients Earth-plants need to grow. But would they?
Geologists at the University of Georgia, including some who had studied extreme environments like the far northeast of Russia, set out to use NASA’s latest Martian data. NASA has taken surface samples and analyzed them, and found that they contain most of the nutrients plants as we know them need, including nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium.
The geologists used all of that data to create five samples of “Martian” soil here on Earth, which replicated the texture and contents of five different Martian soil samples. These samples turned out to be, the researchers say, crusty and dry, and not particularly suitable for plant growth. This isn’t unexpected, as Mars is incredibly arid, cold, and lacks the protection from ultraviolet rays that Earth’s atmosphere provides.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the task is impossible, the researchers say. After all, not all soil here on our home planet is particularly suitable for growing crops—just look at the natural flora of, say, much of Southern California, which contains a great deal of desert scrub, until humans got in there with irrigation and soil amendments. The geologists at the University of Georgia say some of those techniques could be used on Mars, including adding beneficial bacteria and fungi that can make the soil more suitable for plants better suited to growth here on Earth.
Follow us
Republish!
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Want to republish a Modern Farmer story?
We are happy for Modern Farmer stories to be shared, and encourage you to republish our articles for your audience. When doing so, we ask that you follow these guidelines:
Please credit us and our writers
For the author byline, please use “Author Name, Modern Farmer.” At the top of our stories, if on the web, please include this text and link: “This story was originally published by Modern Farmer.”
Please make sure to include a link back to either our home page or the article URL.
At the bottom of the story, please include the following text:
“Modern Farmer is a nonprofit initiative dedicated to raising awareness and catalyzing action at the intersection of food, agriculture, and society. Read more at <link>Modern Farmer</link>.”
Use our widget
We’d like to be able to track our stories, so we ask that if you republish our content, you do so using our widget (located on the left hand side of the article). The HTML code has a built-in tracker that tells us the data and domain where the story was published, as well as view counts.
Check the image requirements
It’s your responsibility to confirm you're licensed to republish images in our articles. Some images, such as those from commercial providers, don't allow their images to be republished without permission or payment. Copyright terms are generally listed in the image caption and attribution. You are welcome to omit our images or substitute with your own. Charts and interactive graphics follow the same rules.
Don’t change too much. Or, ask us first.
Articles must be republished in their entirety. It’s okay to change references to time (“today” to “yesterday”) or location (“Iowa City, IA” to “here”). But please keep everything else the same.
If you feel strongly that a more material edit needs to be made, get in touch with us at [email protected]. We’re happy to discuss it with the original author, but we must have prior approval for changes before publication.
Special cases
-
Extracts. You may run the first few lines or paragraphs of the article and then say: “Read the full article at Modern Farmer” with a link back to the original article.
-
Quotes. You may quote authors provided you include a link back to the article URL.
-
Translations. These require writer approval. To inquire about translation of a Modern Farmer article, contact us at [email protected]
-
Signed consent / copyright release forms. These are not required, provided you are following these guidelines.
-
Print. Articles can be republished in print under these same rules, with the exception that you do not need to include the links.
Tag us
When sharing the story on social media, please tag us using the following: - Twitter (@ModFarm) - Facebook (@ModernFarmerMedia) - Instagram (@modfarm)
Use our content respectfully
Modern Farmer is a nonprofit and as such we share our content for free and in good faith in order to reach new audiences. Respectfully,
-
No selling ads against our stories. It’s okay to put our stories on pages with ads.
-
Don’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually.
-
You have no rights to sell, license, syndicate, or otherwise represent yourself as the authorized owner of our material to any third parties. This means that you cannot actively publish or submit our work for syndication to third party platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. We understand that publishers cannot fully control when certain third parties automatically summarize or crawl content from publishers’ own sites.
Keep in touch
We want to hear from you if you love Modern Farmer content, have a collaboration idea, or anything else to share. As a nonprofit outlet, we work in service of our community and are always open to comments, feedback, and ideas. Contact us at [email protected].Scientists Recreated Martian Soil to See if Anything Will Grow in It
by Dan Nosowitz, Modern Farmer
October 29, 2020
Modern Farmer Weekly
Solutions Hub
Innovations, ideas and inspiration. Actionable solutions for a resilient food system.
ExploreShare With Us
We want to hear from Modern Farmer readers who have thoughtful commentary, actionable solutions, or helpful ideas to share.
Submit
Was any consideration given to the fact that dirt (which sounds like what these folks came up with) needs to work in conjunction with cryptogamic and mycorrhizal organisms in order to form the colloidal structure that is “soil” before plants can colonize it?