Wednesday, January 16, 2019

"Cotton seeds sprout on Moon after Chinese rover begins era of lunar farming"

From Engineering & Technology Magazine, Jan 15:
The China National Space Administration has confirmed that cotton seeds carried to the moon in the Chang’e-4 mission have sprouted, in a promising step towards longer-term space exploration. 

Previously, scientists have grown plants on board the International Space Station (ISS) and other craft in Low Earth Orbit, although the sprouting of these cotton seeds mark the first time any biological matter has been grown on the Moon.

The Chang’e-4 mission – a key part of China’s lunar exploration programme – aims to explore the far (‘dark’) side of the Moon. A robotic lander and rover were launched by the national space agency in December and completed a soft landing on flat ground inside a crater near the lunar South Pole. The rover will survey the terrain of the Moon, collect data on its mineral composition and take measurements to help understand its environment.

It also carried sealed containers holding air, soil, water, cotton, rapeseed, potato, and rock cress seeds, yeast and fruit fly eggs, which it aims to cultivate in the lunar environment. The seeds were rendered dormant with undefined “biological technology” for their journey to the Moon and only began to grow when a command was sent to water them.
Today, Chinese state media announced that the cotton seeds had begun to sprout. The People’s Daily posted a photograph of the sprouting cotton on social media, and described the achievement as “the completion of humankind’s first biological experiment on the Moon.”...
Professor Liu Hanlong, who leads the experiment, said that rapeseed and potato seeds had followed the cotton seeds in sprouting, although so far only a photograph of the cress has been released....
...MORE

Now if Elon Musk can get up there with a little cotton gin, a tiny spinning wheel, and a mini-loom we can recreate the industrial revolution!
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