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'Once in a blue moon experiment...'

Growing plants on Earth’s moon might seem like “asking for the moon," but eight Kenmare High School students are seeking to demonstrate that it is a possibility.

4/06/21 (Tue)

Young scientists . . . Kenmare High School students Taylor Cattin and Arand Bartlett conduct soil tests for nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium levels in the experiment of growing pea plants in “moon dirt.”

By Laura Mibeck

Growing plants on Earth’s moon might seem like “asking for the moon," but eight Kenmare High School students are seeking to demonstrate that it is a possibility.

The challenge is hosted by a group called the Institute of Competition Sciences, which houses many and varied science and engineering challenges. This group seeks to inspire and motivate students in science by engaging them in real world problems. This particular challenge is called “Plant the Moon.”

The goal of the competition is to assist NASA in the Artemis project, which aims at returning to the Moon with the ultimate goal of traveling to Mars. The competition has four categories for registry: Middle school, high school, college, and professional.

In each category, teams ranging from four to 10 people are allowed to set up an experiment of their choice using 500 grams of lunar simulant. Real moon soil is cost prohibitive as one could likely imagine considering the shipping cost of moving moon soil from its source to Earth, but not even NASA uses the real moon soil... 

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