Scientists have grown plants in soil from the moon collected by NASA’s Apollo astronauts.
Category: space – Page 602
Scientists successfully grow plants in Moon soil
For the first time ever, scientists have successfully grown plants in soil from the Moon.
Researchers from the University of Florida planted seeds from the Arabidopsis plant — commonly known as thale cress — into a few teaspoons worth of lunar soil collected in the late 60s and early 70s during the Apollo 11, 12 and 17 missions.
After about a week of watering and feeding, the seeds grew into and out of the soil, or lunar regolith, according to a paper detailing the experiment published Thursday in the scientific journal “Communications Biology.”
Sophisticated fluid mechanics model: Space–time isogeometric analysis of car and tire aerodynamics
The complex aerodynamics around a moving car and its tires are hard to see, but not for some mechanical engineers.
Specialists in fluid dynamics at Rice University and Waseda University in Tokyo have developed their computer simulation methods to the point where it’s possible to accurately model moving cars, right down to the flow around rolling tires.
The results are there for all to see in a video produced by Takashi Kuraishi, a research associate in the George R. Brown School of Engineering lab of Tayfun Tezduyar, the James F. Barbour Professor of Mechanical Engineering, and a student of alumnus Kenji Takizawa, a professor at Waseda and an adjunct professor at Rice.
A first: Scientists grow plants in soil from the Moon
Scientists have grown plants in soil from the Moon, a first in human history and a milestone in lunar and space exploration.
In a new paper published in the journal Communications Biology, University of Florida researchers showed that plants can successfully sprout and grow in lunar soil. Their study also investigated how plants respond biologically to the Moon’s soil, also known as lunar regolith, which is radically different from soil found on Earth.
This work is a first step toward one day growing plants for food and oxygen on the Moon or during space missions. More immediately, this research comes as the Artemis Program plans to return humans to the Moon.
Study reveals lunar soil can support plant growth
The chemical composition and presence of metallic fragments also make lunar soil-less suitable for plant growth as compared to volcanic ash. However, the biggest takeaway from this experiment is still that scientists have somehow grown a plant in a soil sample taken from the Moon.
Emphasizing the importance of this result co-author and geologist Stephen Elardo said, from a geology standpoint, I look at this soil as being very very different from any soil you will find here on Earth. I think it’s amazing the plant still grows, right. It’s stressed, but it doesn’t die. It doesn’t fail to grow at all, it adapts.
The researchers also highlight that further research can enable us to know the ways plants can be efficiently grown on the Moon. Therefore, through related studies, we need to better understand how Earth plants interact with lunar soil.
The surface of Mars captured by Perseverance Rover
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS
Superconducting X-ray laser reaches operating temperature colder than outer space
Nestled 30 feet underground in Menlo Park, California, a half-mile-long stretch of tunnel is now colder than most of the universe. It houses a new superconducting particle accelerator, part of an upgrade project to the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) X-ray free-electron laser at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.
Crews have successfully cooled the accelerator to minus 456 degrees Fahrenheit—or 2 Kelvin—a temperature at which it becomes superconducting and can boost electrons to high energies with nearly zero energy lost in the process. It is one of the last milestones before LCLS-II will produce X-ray pulses that are 10,000 times brighter, on average, than those of LCLS and that arrive up to a million times per second—a world record for today’s most powerful X-ray light sources.
“In just a few hours, LCLS-II will produce more X-ray pulses than the current laser has generated in its entire lifetime,” says Mike Dunne, director of LCLS. “Data that once might have taken months to collect could be produced in minutes. It will take X-ray science to the next level, paving the way for a whole new range of studies and advancing our ability to develop revolutionary technologies to address some of the most profound challenges facing our society.”
James Webb Space Telescope enters ‘homestretch’ of commissioning with stunning image
We’ve never seen a neighboring galaxy like this before.
The Large Magellanic Cloud is sharper than ever in the infrared eyes of the James Webb Space Telescope.
As the $10 billion observatory enters the “homestretch” of its commissioning work, according to officials, Webb’s latest image showed off the telescope’s literally stellar performance using its coldest instrument, the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI).