China plants cotton and other plants on the moon.

The mission is not just to successfully plant plants on the moon, but also to bloom, which is supposed to happen at the end of the 100-day trial period. Thus, in this article, "The New Arab" offers you the details of planting the first plant on the moon, as well as information about past experiences in space farming or in a simulated environment.

Cotton on the moon:

The Great Chinese Probe has developed a ground-tight aquarium containing cottonseed, rapeseeds, potato seeds, fruit flies and yeast eggs in order to create a self-sustaining environment similar to the one used in the world. plant environment of our planet. This would represent a major step in providing a food source to astronauts during their long space journey and avoid the need to return to Earth to supply.

Professor Liu Hanlong of Chongqing University, who led the research, said that rapeseed and potato seeds had also sprouted, but that cottonseeds had the desired effect. "We have taken into account the possibility of future survival in space, gravity can help us later lay the foundation stone of creating a human settlement on the moon."

The aluminum basin, known as the "small ecological circle on the moon", weighs only 3 kilograms, but costs more than 1.15 million pounds sterling, the South China Morning Post announced. It is also designed to maintain a temperature between 1 and 30 ° C, allowing natural light, water and nutrients to reach the plants.

The six elements of the aquarium are chosen to act as "consumers and analysts". The oxygen plants are produced by photosynthesis and the food consumed by the fruit flies is maintained for their survival. Yeast disintegrates the residues of flies and plants. The potato can also be a source of food, According to the website "Independent", it is destined to become a source of oil and cotton a source of tissue if people manage to establish themselves on the moon in the future.

These seedlings grew in space:

The Chinese experience has never planted seeds on the surface of an extraterrestrial planet, and plants were previously planted aboard the International Space Station.

According to News Science, the astronauts tasted the first Romanian lettuce grown at the International Space Station in 2015. The algae were able to survive 530 days on the surface of the same station, according to the same source.

Crops in the soil and the environment simulating the space:

Several experiments have been conducted in field laboratories to simulate the challenges of space agriculture, such as the 2016 Greenpeace experiment at the Mars research station, in the state of Hawaii. Utah, aiming to replicate the difficulties of agriculture on Mars.

Last year, scientists from the University of Wageningen in the Netherlands managed to harvest 10 crops, including tomatoes, peas, radishes and spinach, using the soil of one. Hawaii volcano whose chemical composition mimics the formation of a red planet soil, but they have not yet determined whether the crops are safe at the moment because the soil used contains metals such as lead and mercury, and should finish their experiments in April this year, according to the website "delta.tudelft".