Is there really life on Mars? Will this be our new home in the distant future? We'll find out once the United Kingdom has successfully grown what could be the first plant life in another planet.
Indeed, we are getting more serious about inhabiting another planet and building a colony. Fortunately, unlike in Interstellar, we don't have to go through wormholes to find a suitable planet. We simply have to look out our next-door neighbor, Mars.
The red planet expects to receive its first human visitors sometime in 2024 wherein four astronauts will arrive and live there hopefully permanently, as part of the ambitious and huge project called Mars One. More people will be coming over every 2 years until they can set up their own village and build the very first human colony outside Earth.
But before that, much-needed supplies have to be brought, and the first ones will arrive in 2018. These include a 5kg camera system, 10kg water extraction system, 2kg educational payload, and 6kg thin film demonstrator powered by solar energy. A team of UK scientists, meanwhile, is one of the lucky ones to bring a living thing: lettuce.
This project of University of Southampton scientists has just been shortlisted for the mission's first unmanned flight. It aims to grow this well-known salad vegetable using the planet's own atmosphere and sunlight.
The reason for bringing lettuce to Mars actually makes a lot of sense. As Suzanna Lucarotti, its project leader, points out, food is a basic and essential commodity especially if you're living in a completely new planet where food source is somehow unheard of.
The team is confident of growing lettuce in Mars and considers the project called LettuceonMars feasible. Their system will have the ability to convert Mar's atmosphere to carbon dioxide while the seeds will be frozen until landing. Like in Earth, the lettuce will be grown in a greenhouse, where cameras are also found so the team can monitor its growth over the years.
