(Press-News.org) Dining on the moon or Mars might seem like a fantasy reserved for science fiction, but researchers are investigating how it could become a reality. Their efforts to recycle plant and human waste into a fertilizer material — turning the barren surfaces of the moon and Mars into fertile fields that might be suitable for extraterrestrial agriculture — are described in ACS Earth and Space Chemistry.
“In lunar and Martian outposts, organic wastes will be key to generating healthy, productive soils, explains Harrison Coker, the first author on the study. “By weathering simulant soils from the moon and Mars with organic waste streams, it was revealed that many essential plant nutrients can be harvested from surface minerals.”
For humanity to set up a colony on the moon or Mars, a very uninhabitable landscape needs to be transformed into something habitable. Surfaces on both celestial bodies are composed of dusty, rocky material, known as regolith, which is not suitable for plant growth. In one popular science fiction novel and subsequent movie featuring a Martian colony, a botanist turned regolith into a growth medium by using waste left behind by his fellow astronauts. And now, Coker and Julie Howe are working with colleagues at NASA to attempt something similar. They are investigating how a solution of recycled sewage interacts with simulated lunar and Martian regolith to see if the result provides a suitable medium to grow crops.
A team at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center is leading the development of bioregenerative life support systems, or BLiSS. These systems consist of a series of bioreactors and filters that transform sewage — an artificial version, in this case — into a nutrient-dense solution. Here, researchers combined the BLiSS effluent with simulated Martian or lunar regolith (each called a simulant) and placed the two different solutions in a shaker for 24 hours.
The experiment revealed that the weathered simulants supplied large amounts of essential plant nutrients, including sulfur, calcium, and magnesium, and other metals, when interacting with both water and BLiSS solutions. In addition, looking at the simulant particles under a microscope revealed weathered features such as tiny pits forming in the lunar simulant and the Martian simulant becoming covered in nanoparticles. Both helped make the sharp minerals in the simulant less abrasive, showing successful weathering and a step toward a more soil-like material.
Despite these promising initial results, actual lunar and Martian regolith differ from the simulants, so further experimentation is needed. Regardless, the researchers say that this work provides crucial insights into a process that will be critical for sustaining human colonies in outer space.
The authors acknowledge funding from the NASA Space Technology Graduate Research Opportunities and the Mars Campaign Office.
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