Scientists used soil samples taken during moon missions between 1969 and 1972 to grow a type of cabbage.
For the first six days, the moon’s soil-grown plants looked identical to the earth’s soil-grown ones. After that, the lunar plants started to wilt, but it was still a great result for an experiment in which almost everyone involved was expected to fail.
It was a wild week for science because researchers grew plants in soil from the moon while astronomers published a never-before-seen image of the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy.
The researchers found that all three lunar soils were capable of growing plants, but with some difficulty.
Compared with the control samples grown in lunar simulant soil, plants grown in actual lunar regolith had more stunted root systems, slower growth, and less extensive leaf canopies and also exhibited stress responses like deeper green or purple leaf pigmentation.
Although all of the plants grown in lunar soil were stressed, some were more stressed than others.