{"id":97114,"date":"2019-10-06T21:02:23","date_gmt":"2019-10-07T04:02:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/10\/china-grows-cotton-plant-on-the-far-side-of-the-moon-in-biological-first"},"modified":"2019-10-06T21:02:23","modified_gmt":"2019-10-07T04:02:23","slug":"china-grows-cotton-plant-on-the-far-side-of-the-moon-in-biological-first","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/10\/china-grows-cotton-plant-on-the-far-side-of-the-moon-in-biological-first","title":{"rendered":"China Grows Cotton Plant on the Far Side of the Moon in Biological First"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/china-grows-cotton-plant-on-the-far-side-of-the-moon-in-biological-first2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>China has broken new lunar ground, successfully growing cotton on the moon for the first time. The experiment was part of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.digitaltrends.com\/cool-tech\/change-4-landing-footage\/\">Chang\u2019e 4 project<\/a>, in which China is exploring the far side of the moon with a lander. This is the same lander that recently discovered a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.digitaltrends.com\/cool-tech\/change4-moon-mystery-substance\/\">mysterious gel-like substance<\/a> on the moon\u2019s surface.<\/p>\n<p>The cotton plant was one of several organisms encased in a mini biosphere weighing just 2.6 kilograms (5.7 lbs) with a pressure of 1 atmosphere which was aboard the lander. The organisms experienced an environment largely similar to that on Earth, however, they did have to contend with both <a href=\"https:\/\/www.digitaltrends.com\/cool-tech\/space-radiation-brain-damage\/\">space radiation<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.digitaltrends.com\/cool-tech\/plants-microgravity-food\/\">microgravity<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In an interview with engineering magazine <a href=\"https:\/\/spectrum.ieee.org\/tech-talk\/aerospace\/robotic-exploration\/china-grew-these-leaves-on-the-moon\">IEEE Spectrum<\/a>, project leader for the experiment Xie Gengxin explained more about the challenges of growing plants in the restricted environment. \u201cThe weight of the Chang\u2019e-4 probe demanded that the weight [of the experiment] can\u2019t exceed three kilograms,\u201d he said. That\u2019s why it was important to select the biological samples in the experiment carefully.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>China has broken new lunar ground, successfully growing cotton on the moon for the first time. The experiment was part of the Chang\u2019e 4 project, in which China is exploring the far side of the moon with a lander. This is the same lander that recently discovered a mysterious gel-like substance on the moon\u2019s surface. [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1902,3,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-97114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bioengineering","category-biological","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97114\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}