Planting potatoes or radishes in space: science explores extraterrestrial agriculture

Science has been driving research over the past decade to see if space agriculture could be a viable alternative to Earth. Planting radishes, potatoes, or even flowers in space is a goal that science is pushing in the last decade, motivated by numerous investigations to explore the feasibility of extraterrestrial agriculture that could, in a hypothetical case, serve as an alternative to a Earth with finite resources. This desire to achieve agriculture beyond the confines of Earth comes, naturally, with the desire and attempts of Astronomy to enable humans to step on or even live for seasons on other planets. One of the latest studies, driven from Spain, was recently published by the journal Life Sciences in Space Research and lays the groundwork for solutions that allow the cultivation of food on Mars by adapting plant species—present in gypsum-rich soils—to the conditions of the red planet. Specifically, they propose to take advantage of the experience with flowers of the ...