LUNAR BREATH TEAM SUBMISSION:
A PLANT ON THE MOON
EXPERIMENT DESCRIPTION
In the next century, or even before, mankind will be ready to establish a colony on another planet
or on a satellite. Unfortunately, so far, we have just once stepped foot on another celestial being,
on the only one Earth’s satellite, named the Moon, and we have found it not to be a habitable
environment.
Looking at a future colony on the satellite, vegetation would provide inestimable life support in
terms of food and air quality: these resources are fundamental for any human settlement and Moon
surface, at the moment, misses them at all. Then, a first vital step towards sustainability in a new
environment would be growing a plant on the Moon.
If we manage to cultivate plants on the Moon, like in hydroponic farms, we could overcome these
problems, making the possibility of a stable settlement on the Moon a reality in the future decades,
without any need to import food from Earth, which would increase a lot the costs of the operation.
Obviously the plant could not survive on Lunar surface let alone. For this reason, a small lightweight
and self-sustaining habitat will be needed for it. A small camera inside the habitat will document
the plant growth and some sensors will monitor water levels and temperature.
Arabidopsis thaliana is the optimal candidate for the experiment, being a popular tool for
understanding the molecular biology of many plants traits: in fact, it is characterized by a quick
growth (2 weeks necessary for germination) and by small dimensions.
Here at Lunar Breath we believe that this kind of experiment would perfectly fit with the specifics
given for team Indus mission and it would be an awesome occasion to make a step forward in human
colonization of the space so we hope to have the chance to develop our project and see it flying to
the Moon.
CONDUCT OF EXPERIMENT
This “PlantOnTheMoon” experiment would fall in
the Mission Class- 6C and requires Type 3
Commissioning.
A RhizoTube device by [1] will be used.
Studying plant root growth requires the access of
root within the soil. The RhizoTube combined with
two camera collocated into the device will enable
this physiologic observation.
It would consist of a unique container made of
an external cylinder containing sensors, LED (with
a spectra for plant growth) on the top, cameras (to
study plant behaviour) and gas (CO2 and O2).
There will be a central cylinder with a plastic
layer, then a space for the seedlings with soil and
nutriments for its growth and finally an external
membrane.
The inner cylinder will contain a wet absorbent
material plus water
[1] RhizoTubes as a new tool for high throughput imaging of plant root development and architecture: test,
comparison, with pot grown plants and validation, by C. Jeudy, M. Adrian et al., 2016, doi:10.1186/s13007-0160131-9