When you are building the first ever lunar greenhouse, you have to make sure it is small, lightweight, strong and super space-age looking. Paragon has nailed all four.
Today we are unveiling a prototype design for a lunar greenhouse that can fly to the moon on our Google Lunar X PRIZE lander and grow a flower. In this case, an Arabidopsis flower. Arabidopsis is in the mustard family and is the lab standard for all plant geneticists. As such it is very well characterized and is an excellent choice to send to the moon to study how a plant responds to that unique environment. Although government space programs have grow plants in microgravity (orbiting around the Earth). No one has ever grown a plant in partial gravity- as you would find on the surface of the moon.
Lunar gravity is 1/6 Earth gravity. That means a person who weighs 180 lbs on Earth would only weigh 30 lbs on the moon. No one knows if the plants will grow taller, devote less resources to structurally reinforcing their stems, or change nothing at all. Being a biologist, especially one with a keen interest in bioregenerative life support systems, growing a plant on the Moon is a very exciting step. The first greenhouse on the surface of another world. Godspeed little plant!
We hope there are many more to follow you.
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Yes, this is very interesting
That is a very cool idea. If your idea works, you can sell replicas for people to put on their desks and in their homes! But how are you going to keep it warm? I think a good idea would be to use an aerogel that is translucent enough to support photosynthesis. I also wonder about your choice of plant. A plant with a faster growing cycle might give you a better chance of collecting data, since it would not have to survive for as long on the moon.
I've talked about putting a fish on the moon. In that case there could be aquatic plants to support the fish.
This is very interesting
This is very interesting. I didn't expect a Google Lunar X PRIZE mission to also bring a living being to the Moon :-)