The quest to figure out farming on Mars
MIT Technology Review
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If we’re going to live on Mars we’ll need a way to grow food in its arid dirt. Researchers think they know a way. In this edition of What’s Next in Tech, dive into the exciting quest to figure out what it would take to farm on the Red Planet.
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If ever a blade of grass grew on Mars, those days are over. But could they begin again? What would it take to grow plants to feed future astronauts on Mars?
Once upon a time, water flowed across the surface of Mars. Waves lapped against shorelines, strong winds gusted and howled, and driving rain fell from thick, cloudy skies. It wasn’t really so different from our own planet 4 billion years ago, except for one crucial detail—its size. Mars is about half the diameter of Earth, and that’s where things went wrong.?
The Martian core cooled quickly, soon leaving the planet without a magnetic field. This, in turn, left it vulnerable to the solar wind, which swept away much of its atmosphere. Without a critical shield from the sun’s ultraviolet rays, Mars could not retain its heat. Some of the oceans evaporated, and the subsurface absorbed the rest, with only a bit of water left behind and frozen at its poles. Unrelenting radiation, along with electrostatic discharge from planet-wide dust storms, drove chemical reactions in the arid Martian dirt, ultimately leaving it rich in pesky toxic salts called perchlorates.?
In science fiction, growing food on Mars isn’t much of a problem. Matt Damon’s character in the 2015 movie The Martian simply had to build a greenhouse, spread out human excrement, add water, and wait. The film got a lot of things right—bacteria in the human biome will be useful—but it didn’t account for the perchlorates. The potato plants that sustained him would never have grown, but even if they had, two years of eating contaminated, carcinogenic potatoes would have nuked his thyroid, boxed his kidneys, and damaged his cells—though he might not have realized it, because perchlorates are also neurotoxic. It would have been Matt Damon’s finest death scene.
Though perchlorates were first discovered by NASA’s Phoenix lander in 2008, it took subsequent rovers, and compilation of historic data, to confirm that not only are perchlorates everywhere on Mars, but they are, in fact, abundant. Overall, Mars’s surface has perchlorate concentrations of about 0.5% by weight. On Earth, the concentration is often a millionth that amount.
For NASA, that’s a devastating issue. The ultimate goal of the agency’s Artemis program is to land astronauts on Mars. And for the last decade, the agency has pursued a long-term plan of establishing an “Earth independent” human presence on the Red Planet. Any notion of an independent Mars means the perchlorate problem must be solved, because humans have to eat. Read the story to discover how scientists are tackling the problem of perchlorates.
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Image: Meredith Miotke | Photo: NASA/JPL-CALTECH/MSSS
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1 周Towards Economic Revolution……Global Financial Reform and the Survival of the Human Race...?https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Transfinancial_Economics
OK Bo?tjan Dolin?ek
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1 个月Cool!
Bilingual safety trainer & orchard owner
1 个月I am boycotting hitting the repost in this one. In the 1990 s I had the privilege of working in the same department at a world class land grant plant science group, and had fascinating discussions with the resident scientist doing research on plant growth on gravity free environments etc. Mind you, just down the hall from researchers on plant respiration desert plants, etc and of course buildings away from plant molecular biologists. I now think that such research needs to be funded but on a lesser scale than conservation biology. Urgency to save versus urgency to create a nebulous and far fetched effort to duplicate what has taken millions of years to evolve. The wealth of research areas done carefully on earth to me far outweighs far flung future exploits wrought with possible destruction of new environments.
Writer | Editor of Deep Learning Daily | Silicon Valley-Based
1 个月Years ago, I came across an idea that struck me as particularly insightful: to survive on Mars, colonists would have to adopt a plant-based diet. The reasoning is simple—cows are too resource-intensive and produce harmful emissions. It made me think: if that's the answer for Mars, shouldn’t it be the answer for Earth, too? Unfortunately, that realization hasn’t fully caught on here. We’re still cutting down rainforests, dedicating prime farmland to cattle, and shortening our lifespans with the excessive consumption of animal products. The solution is clear: fewer cows, more plants. Yet, many people can’t move past outdated notions that link eating pork and steak to masculinity. Fortunately, awareness is growing, and more people are embracing plant-based diets for the sake of their health and the environment. Imagine enjoying a rich lentil stew or a colorful quinoa salad with roasted veggies—simple, delicious meals that can help make a big difference. If we can see the necessity of plant-based living for survival on Mars, why not recognize it for Earth as well? The same solutions that could sustain life on another planet are exactly what we need here.