

First flight of Lunar plant growth experiment - murtza
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/cct/office/cif/2013/lunar_plant.html

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bfe
The lead contact point for this proposal, Chris McKay of NASA Ames, had a
similar proposal around 14 years ago for growing a rose plant on a Mars
lander. It'll be fun to see this idea finally (hopefully) take root.

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TrainedMonkey
Next: plants vs zombies in space. Seriously, this is super cool. This study
has further implications of letting us know how plant life grows in different
gravitational environment, which would give us interesting insight about life
on other planets and how* Earth's gravity affected ecosystem and/or evolution
on our own planet.

* Further studies will be needed before we can make any inferences on that front, but this is a good start.

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timthimmaiah
NASA waiting on Google for a ride up to the moon...C'MON MAN

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justinpombrio
To be fair, they did get there first.

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hrjet
I am surprised that such an experiment hasn't been conducted before! Was it
just caution that held them back or something else? Since the moon lacks an
atmosphere, there is zero chance of contamination of the moon with plants.

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pavanred
Wouldn't sending out any lifeforms from Earth to other planets contaminate,
for lack of a better word, the environment there? There could be a lot about
these places that we don't know yet.

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bradleyland
Were the moon teeming with life, that might be a concern, but we know with a
reasonable degree of certainty that the moon is without life. It's unlikely
that any life well-adapted to earth's environment will flourish on the moon
without a support system, so there is little risk of harm to the moon's
environment (or lack thereof).

