
China Grew Two Cotton Leaves on the Moon - headalgorithm
https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/aerospace/robotic-exploration/china-grew-these-leaves-on-the-moon
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kevinconroy
[https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-6599445/That...](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-6599445/That-
didnt-long-China-reveals-cotton-sprout-planted-lunar-lander-dead.html)

Recent article with actual photo (not just the CGI rendering)

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aloer
I don’t think I have ever seen such an aggressive shaking gdpr popup

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lostlogin
And that pop up might be the least offensive thing about that paper.

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ryanhuff
How is this much different than growing within a space station in orbit?
Didn’t the plant grow in its own mini biosphere (soil) separate from the moon
surface, essentially isolated from the lunar environment other than light and
heat?

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t0mbstone
Maybe the moon's gravity? Or temperature cycle differences?

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knodi123
From the article, "But, the plants will not be able to survive the lunar
night, when temperatures dip down to -170 degrees Celsius."

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aeternum
I wonder if that part was expected or if something broke down. Strange to go
to all the work of planting a seed and creating the proper environment with
light routing knowing that it will last only a single lunar day.

Seems likely that the insulation or power system did not work as designed.

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kop316
I'd suspect it's a "tack on" experiement. They were doing a bunch of
experiments and wanted to see if a plant could even germinate in a low gravity
environment. Now that they know it can germinate, it is worth the money to see
if i t could last longer.

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alex_duf
Isn't the photo some bad CGI?

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karlshea
I doubt it. Similar experiments on the ISS looked exactly the same.

Edit: Nevermind, the IEEE article photo is definitely a render. I was
referring to the picture on the Guardian.

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lxe
Looks like a bad 3D render... which it is?

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markdown
Why do we get titles like this? It's so weird.

If this were a NASA thing I promise you the title wouldn't be "USA Grew Two
Cotton Leaves on the Moon".

Everything Chinese is reduced to "China".

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rrss
NASA's brand is much better known than CNSA's.

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markdown
Gee... do you think maybe that's because NASA's achievements are attributed to
NASA while CNSA's are attributed to "China"?

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rrss
I think it is because NASA

1\. is 30 years older

2\. did that whole "men on the moon" thing

3\. is featured frequently in U.S. media, which is consumed around the world.

Also, the CNSA refers to everything it does as China's accomplishments:
[http://www.cnsa.gov.cn/english/index.html](http://www.cnsa.gov.cn/english/index.html).

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40four
_(edit: found the link to article with the real picture)_

Not going to lie, I'm impressed that they pulled this off, and it's really,
really cool!

It is interesting that something similar was the original concept for what
turned into Space X. So it's not really an original idea.

[https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/jp5g8k/spacex-is-
because-...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/jp5g8k/spacex-is-because-elon-
musk-wanted-to-grow-plants-on-mars)

(VIDEO)
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bjGiY8Suk9o](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bjGiY8Suk9o)

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CorruptedArc
I was hoping they would use lunar "dirt". I mean this experiment doesn't seem
like it even had to be on the moon due to the closed-off environment. It's
still cool but I feel like more could have been learned here.

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Pfhreak
Do plants grow well in microgravity/low gravity is still not well understood.
Growing stuff on the moon, especially more complex plants, is still quite
valuable to our understanding of whether we can sustain life off world.

I'm less familiar with Lunar "dirt" (aka regolith) than Martian regolith, but
it's very likely that Lunar regolith isn't capable of supporting life. Martian
regolith is a highly toxic blend of perchlorates, oxides, and extremely dry
jagged minerals. The lack of a water cycle means that weathering behaves very
differently, and the resulting material is considerably sharper and finer than
the stuff on Earth. It also, of course, lacks any of the organic content that
you'd need to make healthy soil.

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WalterBright
With all the lunar rocks brought back by the Apollo missions, it's sad if no
researchers tried to grow things in it.

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Pfhreak
Those rocks are highly controlled, however there are scientists investigating
whether soil can be made from simulated regolith.

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WalterBright
Many have wound up in private hands, and others just sit uselessly in museums.

Besides, what more valuable research could be done with them than answering
"can we grow crops in lunar dirt" and "what do we need to mix in the lunar
dirt to get crops to grow"?

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Pfhreak
I believe most still remain in a sealed vault, stored in a nitrogen
environment, and only rarely are damaged or passed to other scientists for
study.

We might want to understand:

The rate at which solar radiation impacts one side of lunar rock vs another
(all the specimens were sampled with their orientation photographed). The
composition of different lunar materials in different places. The alignment of
various internal crystal or magnetic elements to better understand the moon
and Earth's history. If we get very lucky, we might pick up a rock that came
from Mars, or somewhere else, and we can understand the creation of our own
solar system. Solar radiation leaves its mark on the rocks, and provides us a
record of our sun's history if we can learn to read it.

We might want to understand whether a lunar regolith sample was capable of
sustaining life, but the way we do that is not just grab the existing samples
and put a seed in them. They are far too rare and precious. Better to try and
understand everything about them and their formation, then try to create as
accurate a simulation as possible.

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WalterBright
> Better to try and understand everything about them and their formation, then
> try to create as accurate a simulation as possible.

Why is that better? Learning if they can support life seems far, far more
valuable and practical than better understanding of its geological history.

If crops can grow in it, then a moon base becomes far more practical, and with
a moon base you'll have all the rocks you want for further study.

I.e. priority should go to "what do we need to know to build a sustainable
moon base". Understanding solar formation history is of doubtful immediate
value.

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Pfhreak
Good question. I'm guessing that solar history could inform things like the
histories of other world and their compositions. We might be better able to
predict where to find water, or learn why Mars has no magnetic field.

If we can manufacture lunar regolith, and it's 99.9 percent the same, why use
the real stuff (which is literally priceless) ?

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WalterBright
If we can manufacture lunar regolith, then the real thing is not needed for
any other studies, either!

> which is literally priceless

The price we'll pay for not using it will be the cost of extra missions to the
moon to do those experiments there. We cannot plan a moon base without knowing
whether crops will grow there or not.

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sgt3v
is the photo real? looks like cheap cgi render.

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rch
Doesn't look like any lunar regolith was involved.

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bdamm
Yeah, it's one thing to ship a canister to the lunar surface and then witness
a tiny bit of growth, it's quite another to actually grow using the base
aggregates available on the moon. While I appreciate their experiment, it's
really a pretty small result. And perhaps the real headline would be something
like "4 out of 5 expected growths failed to occur and scientists don't know
why". The fruit flies didn't hatch, the yeast didn't colonize, and the other
two seedlings failed to grow at all. The theory was that all of them would
grow in the artificial biozone and maybe even provide a CO2/O2 cycle. But they
didn't, and that's the real science.

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YayamiOmate
Why does it say image processing? How did they record the experiment if they
had to process or maybe even render the picture?

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0xakhil
Does this mean we have colonised moon? (in reference to The Martian movie)

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charlesju
I think the main difference at least in accordance to the movie is this wasn't
activating lunar soil, it was using earth soil on the moon.

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jaimex2
Did they send a seedling or did they actually grow something from a seed?

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jccooper
So where's the planetary protection complaints on this one?

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zipotm
This image is fake?

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samplatt
Re-read these comments; there's lots of links to better sources/images.

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dharmab
Link is down- heres'a an older related article with a photo of the sprout
[https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/jan/16/china-
first-...](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/jan/16/china-first-cotton-
plant-on-moon-dies-change-4-lander)

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sp332
Yours has a much more believeable photo. Here's a mirror of the original with
the weird picture everyone is talking about.
[https://web.archive.org/web/20190930160024/https://spectrum....](https://web.archive.org/web/20190930160024/https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-
talk/aerospace/robotic-exploration/china-grew-these-leaves-on-the-moon)

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sukilot
Is it acceptable that ieee.org posts an article with a faked photo?

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lucideer
Calling it "faked" is somewhat hyperbolic.

The article refers to it as an "image" (as opposed to a raw source photo) that
it clearly states is the result of "image processing".

It's common practice in science to produce such representative images, e.g. in
a lot of astronomy, space photgraphy, and things like SEMs

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reaperducer
_it clearly states is the result of "image processing"._

I see no such statement, clearly or otherwise.

 _It 's common practice in science to produce such representative images_

Maybe this is one reason why a growing number of people don't believe
scientists anymore.

"Representative images" sounds like the fine print in a used car ad.

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seanccox
"The team behind a pioneering biological experiment sent to the lunar far side
has released an image showing two green leaves grown on the moon."

"Image processing has now shown that two cotton leaves had grown—rather than
just one as initially thought—in what was the first biological growth
experiment on the moon."

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reaperducer
"Photo: Chongqing University

Two cotton leaves grown in the Chang’e-4 lander on the far side of the moon."

Photo = "Photograph"

Photo ≠ "We made this cool rendering of what we imagine something like this
would look like."

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avar
"Photo" is used synonymously with "image" or "rendering" depending on the
context, e.g. try searching for "Hubble photography" and you'll find plenty of
examples of cool renderings from aggregated photographic source data.

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magicalhippo
Sure, Hubble images are seldom seen raw, but the resulting images are based on
actual photos. This however seems to have been an outright illustration, and
should have be labelled as such.

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brudgers

      Yossarian, I want you to do something for me. 
      [removes item from small bag] 
      I want to serve this to the men. 
      Taste it and let me know what you think.
    
      [Yossarian takes a bite]
      What is it?
    
      Chocolate-covered cotton.
    
      What are you, crazy?
      
      No good, huh?
     
      For Christ's sake, you didn't even take the seeds out!
      
      Is it really that bad?
     
      It's cotton!  
      
      They've got to learn to like it!
    
      Why?
    
      Look, I saw this great opportunity to corner the market
      in Egyptian cotton. How was I supposed to know there
      was going to be a glut? 
      I've got a hundred warehouses stacked with the stuff all 
      over the European theater.
      I can't get rid of a penny's worth. People eat cotton 
      candy, don't they? 
      Well this stuff is better - it's made out of real cotton.
     
      Milo, people can't eat cotton!
    
      They've got to - it's for the Syndicate!
      
      It will make them sick! - why don't you try it yourself 
      if you don't believe me?
    
      I did - and it made me sick.
    

There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

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jihadjihad
Off-topic: has anyone seen the new Catch-22 series on Hulu? Is it worth
watching? I recently finished the book and happened to notice they made a
miniseries of it!

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ivoras
Very decent, definitely watchable!

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xingped
Did not even know this existed. Thanks!

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foxhop
First thought, they didn't grow anything, they germinated a seed.

2nd thought, great we now left more fingerprints on the Petrie dish that is
the moon.

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aeternum
What's with the obsession with keeping the moon and other planets barren?

There is an incomprehensible number of barren planets: 21.16 quadrillion in
the Virgo Supercluster alone. We should be spreading life, not obsessing with
keeping things 'clean'.

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foxhop
I don't want them to stay barren, to want to know if life exists before
spreading our germs, and sneezing cotton everywhere.

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mcbits
If we find life surviving on one of the planets that we've been exploring, and
it's so similar as to be indistinguishable from Earth life, then it almost
certainly came from Earth on one of our missions. Even if an asteroid
transplanted something that managed to take root millions of years ago, it
would have endured some pretty severe evolutionary pressure by now (and
probably didn't have any competition from native life).

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Reason077
I'd like to see SpaceX grow Cannabis leaves on the moon.

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csommers
So would Elon.

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JumpCrisscross
> _So would Elon_

Symbolically, a mayflower [1] would be smarter.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigaea_repens](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigaea_repens)

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martimarkov
Am I the only one who thinks the scientists are a bit immoral? They wanted to
send a turtle and the only thing that stopped them were the constraints of the
experiment. Not the fact that they would be killing a turtle for literally no
reason.

Kinda makes me think about the fact that we need stronger ethics rules in the
new space race.

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fourthark
_”it is very meaningful to choose tortoise”_

Can anyone explain this reference?

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40four
Well, besides the Soviet mission it mentioned that used tortoises in the past,
I suspect the origin of the reference is in regard to the classic saying "It's
tutles all the way down"

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down)

Not positive about that, but that's where my mind went :)

