Page 98 - How It Works - Book Of Amazing Answers To Curious Questions, Volume 05-15

Could we farm

Mars and the Moon could
on alien planets? be new places to grow food

elieve it or not, the soil found on the Hawaii and Arizona to obtain material akin that untreated soil found on Mars was the
Moon and Mars could actually be to Martian dirt and lunar soil, to provide us plant’s favourite. On the other hand, Moon
Bmuch more fertile than some of the with the information that could help humans dirt didn’t agree with them completely, with
dirt found on Earth. If we are ever to go on to one day settle on an alien planet. Both soils some crops struggling to grow.
colonise other worlds – with the Red Planet have the essential ingredients plants need to All’s not lost for crop farming on the Moon,
being our number-one target – then this is grow – nitrates and ammonium. though – scientists think that pumping our
very good news for astronauts. The experts found – by using ‘fake’ natural satellite’s soil with nitrogen-fi xing
It’s thanks to a team of scientists in the minerals from Mars and the Moon to try and bacteria could be the ticket for growing crops
Netherlands, who have braved volcanoes in grow carrots, tomatoes, weeds and wheat – on our cratered companion.

Growing food on Mars and
the Moon could hugely
benefit plans to colonise
other worlds

What are Mars’ spiders?

These aren’t David Bowie’s backing group, but creepy patterns found in Martian ice

t Mars’s south pole, in the middle of at a faster rate than the ice does. The warmer It is these channels, some of which are 300
winter, the temperature can plummet as ground warms the dry ice from the bottom up, metres (984 feet) across, that create the
Alow as -125 degrees Celsius (-193 degrees causing it to turn back into carbon dioxide gas – a impression of a spider web. Scientists suspect
Fahrenheit), which is chilly enough for carbon process called sublimation. As the gas heats up it that the dwarf planet Pluto might also have
dioxide gas in the atmosphere to freeze out as a expands and forces its way through the ice above, spiders, formed by geysers of nitrogen instead of
layer of dry ice (what we call frozen carbon burrowing its way to the surface by carving out carbon dioxide. Pluto has a bright ice cap that is
dioxide). When spring comes around, this frost channels that converge at a spot where the gas in sunlight at the moment, and the New Horizons
evaporates explosively! The darker ground and dirt it carries with it burst out into the air as a spacecraft will be looking for the spiders from

below the dry ice absorbs the warmth of sunlight geyser of dirty carbon dioxide gas. Pluto when it flies past in July.

© ESA/AOES Medialab; NASA

Spider patterns seen at Mars’s An artist’s impression of the
south pole by NASA’s Mars geysers on Mars that make
Reconnaissance Orbiter the spiders

98 How It Works