Gardeners of the Galaxy Mission Report: 9 April 2024
Your weekly round-up of astrobotany news and adventure. This week we've got LEAF β flying plants to the Moon, UK funding for a robotic space farm, and a rover designed to suss out the soil on Mars.
Hello, Gardeners of the Galaxy! Welcome to this week's Mission Report.
As I mentioned last month, NASA has selected an astrobotany experiment to land on the Moon during the Artemis III mission (currently planned for 2026) - Lunar Effects on Agricultural Flora (LEAF).
GotG Friend Jenny Mortimer (our Mission Specialist for episode 52) said:
"The data we capture from the mission, both from the lunar surface and what we learn when we analyse the samples upon return, will help us to design the lunar and Martian crops of the future."
As Jenny's P4S colleague Mathew Lewsey explained:
"The seeds we send to the Moon will germinate in an enclosed capsule, which we will be monitoring through a remote camera. Our team of scientists will collect data on the plants as they grow on the Moon, monitoring their size and morphology, then conduct genetic and metabolic analyses of individual cells when the plants return to Earth. We can then apply this knowledge to improve plant resilience to radiation and other environmental challenges."
The LEAF β ('LEAF Beta') payload will include red and green varieties of Brassica rapa (Wisconsin Fast Plants®), Arabidopsis thaliana and Wolffia (duckweed) harvested from Adelaide's River Torrens - all of which have already been grown on the International Space Station (ISS). They were chosen in part because they are very fast growing – a necessary consideration given they will only have around five days on the Moon.
Plants may one day provide essential materials for sustaining life in space, such as bio-plastics.
"We've always used plants as a source of materials, since the beginning of civilisation," Jenny said. "So can we think of biodegradable, bio-derived materials, rather than using non-renewable resources that we can use to support that type of habitation?"
Read more: La Trobe University helping to grow plants on the moon and NASA to take Australian plants, including duckweed, from River Torrens to the Moon.
In other news...
The UK Space Agency has funded the second phase of a project to develop a robotic 'space farm' and grow plants in space. Vertical Future and its partners (University of Cambridge, University of Adelaide, University of Western Australia, University of Southern Queensland, Axiom Space, Saber Astronautics and South Australian Space Industry Centre) are working on a Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) facility for the commercial Axiom space station.
Read more: UK Funding for Space Plants Research.
New Scientist has a feature on the Green Propulsion Laboratory in Italy, where an unusual mix of scientists, engineers and psychologists create prototypes that harness natural organisms to do useful jobs. Purple-B, funded by ESA, uses a bacterium called Rhodopseudomonas palustris, commonly found in the Venice lagoon, to convert human waste into hydrogen.
Read more: These curious experiments are finding new ways to tackle pollution.
Ambrook Research has been talking to Jess Atkins of Texas A&M University about her experiments growing chickpeas on simulated lunar regolith.
Read more: Worms in Space.
Researchers from IPSA, EuroSpaceHub Academy, LUNEX EuroMoonMars and Leiden Observatory have presented a conceptual design for AGROMARS, a rover to assess the potential for the soil and atmosphere on Mars to support agriculture. They estimate the total cost of the mission to be around $2.7 billion.
Read more: Want to Start a Farm on Mars? This Rover Will Find Out if it's Possible.
Magnitude.io's 11th mission to the ISS is scheduled for this September aboard SpaceX-31. ExoLab connects schools, science centres, libraries, and museums around the world to a live 30-day mission in microgravity. Students of all ages will investigate how changes in light and gravity affect the research plant Medicago truncatula. Leading up to the space mission, they're also running Space Hackathon 2024, exploring three challenges: building a random positioning machine, improving growth mediums for space plants and building your own ExoLab. It all kicks off at an event on 23 April.
Learn more: Magnitude.io Space Hackathon 2024.
And if you missed the 'SpaCEA for the future of farming' webinar, the whole thing is now available on YouTube.
For the moment, Earth is the only habitable planet in our solar system, and Gardeners of the Galaxy is proudly powered by renewable energy via Ecotricity. If you're in the UK and you make the switch to Ecotricity using my code (RAF-6DRP5) before 31 May 2024, you can get up to £50 in credit on your account (£25 per fuel).
Fulbright Philippines, in partnership with the Philippine Space Agency (PhilSA), is offering two international scholarships for Filipino graduate students, early career professionals, or practitioners working in space science and technology applications (SSTA), space law and policy, and other space-related fields. The scholarships are for those who wish to (1) pursue master’s or doctoral studies or (2) conduct advanced research in universities and appropriate institutions in the United States.
The White House has asked NASA to partner with other organisations and establish a Moon-centric time reference system. Nasa has until the end of 2026 to set up what is being called Coordinated Lunar Time (LTC). Among other things, LTC would provide a time-keeping benchmark for lunar spacecraft and satellites that require extreme precision for their missions.
Read more: Moon Standard Time? Nasa to create lunar-centric time reference system.
Bad news for beer drinkers - hops plants don't like the hotter, drier conditions we've experienced in recent decades, and UK production has plummeted. Researchers in Kent are now isolating hop genes, hoping to produce more climate-change-resilient varieties and the more intense flavours that are becoming popular.
Read more: Fears for the future of the great British pint of beer.
Gisel Garza is a seed hunter, scouring the Rio Grande Valley of Texas for species like Barbados cherry, Texas ebony and fiddlewood. Seedlings are desperately needed to restore the 85,000 acres of thorn forest in the Valley identified as a high priority for reforestation. It would take 85 million seedlings to reforest that many acres, a number that would take 166 years to grow at the current rate of production among nurseries.
Read more: Gisel Garza: Seed hunter.
Fingers of a critically endangered fungus have been removed from its last sites in Scotland and fixed to trees in three woodlands in England to save it from extinction. Willow gloves, which resemble the fingers of washing-up gloves and grow on dead trees, are found only in two woodlands, with most specimens living on just one fallen tree.
Read more: Rare fungus to be moved from Scotland to England in hopes to save species.
The largest-ever study of ocean DNA has revealed intriguing secrets about the abundance of ocean fungi living just beyond the reach of sunlight, and could unlock the door to new drugs that may match the power of penicillin.
Read more: Ocean fungi from twilight zone could be source of next penicillin-like drug.
Research ecologist Dr Ailidh Barnes conducted a national assessment of the UK's earthworms and found that populations had declined by a third over the past 25 years. If trends revealed by her study hold true elsewhere the loss could affect our ability to feed a growing human population.
Read more: ‘Vital for looking after the soil’: fears as UK earthworm population declines.
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Ex solo ad astra,
Emma (Space Gardener)