In hopes of supporting future Martian residents, researchers are trying to figure out how to fertilize the Red Planet's soil to hold vegetation.


Farming in the Red Planet

According to BBC, traveling to Mars can take 7 months or more. Although NASA would be able to send supplies and cargo to the International Space Station, it isn't as possible or efficient for the Red Planet.

Astronauts spending time on the distant planet will require in-situ resource utilization, which means using the available resources to replace Earth items. This includes food and nourishment.

Eventually, when long-term residents reside on Mars, hauling fertilizer bags from spacecraft won't be efficient. Hence, scientists are currently trying to figure out how to revamp the Martian soil to hold crops in the near future.

Thanks to previous Mars missions and NASA rovers and landers, researchers have a firm grasp of the Red Planet's soil's pH balance and mineral makeup, known as regolith.

Mars' red color comes from the oxidation of rocks, dust, and regolith. Below the seemingly endless dust is the crust that contains magnesium, iron, potassium, calcium, and many more elements, say NASA. On the other hand, the presence of these minerals does not ensure the survivability of plants. 

According to NASA, there are 6 spacecraft orbiting Mars, including spacecraft from the European Space Agency and India's first Red Planet spacecraft.

On the surface, two robotic spacecraft are at work exploring Mount Sharp in Gale Crater and the smooth plains of Elysium Planitia.

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Studying Martian Soil

A study in 2014, published in Plos, suggests that plant growth on the Red Planet is possible using moon soil simulants. Proposing the possibility of replicating Martian soil, unfortunately, there aren't massive regolith samples to be sure.

Because it is currently impossible to conduct growth experiments and farming trials on Mars, researchers try to replicate Martian soil conditions on Earth laboratories. 

Researchers from the Florida Institute of Technology recently tried to farm Arabidopsis thaliana (a weed) and Lactuca sativa (lettuce) in a new mineral-based martian regolith stimulant, MGS-1.

The stimulant is a mixture of natural and artificial materials that mimic Mars' basalt-like surface. Researchers found that neither of the two plants would thrive in the conditions without additional supplemental nutrients.

"These findings underscore that ISRU food solutions are likely at a lower technological readiness level than previously thought," wrote researchers on the study published in Icarus. 

"Our strategy was, rather than saying this stimulant grows plants so that means we can grow plants everywhere on Mars, we need to say that Mars is a diverse planet," says Andrew Plamer in an interview by Florida Tech News.

Maned Martian missions are in the near future. In the meantime, researchers are focused on developing plants that will thrive in demanding environments. Researchers say that the experiments' knowledge will also help farming challenges in Earth's drastically changing climates and environmental challenges.

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