Plants 'thrive' on Moon rock diet

Growing plants in space will be far from easy

Scientists with the European Space Agency (Esa) say the day when flowers bloom on the Moon has come closer.

An Esa-linked team has shown that marigolds can grow in crushed rock very like the lunar surface, with no need for plant food.

Some see growing plants on the Moon as a step towards human habitation.

But the concept is not an official aim of Esa, and one of the agency's senior officials has dismissed the idea as "science fiction".

The new research was presented at the European Geosciences Union (EGU) meeting in Vienna, the largest annual European gathering of scientists studying the Earth, its climate and its neighbours in space.

Bernard Foing, a senior scientist with the European Space Research and Technology Centre (Estec) in the Netherlands, believes growing plants on the Moon would be a useful tool to learn how life adapts to lunar conditions, and as a practical aid to establishing manned bases.

"We would bring a system of water circulation and recovery, which is also the type of system that in any case you want to develop when you are going to manufacture a primitive sort of life support system," he told BBC News.

"So it is also a kind of `technological breadboard' for maintaining a simple life form in an extreme environment."

Microbe power

In principle, putting self-contained pieces of kit with seeds and nutrients on the Moon and giving them a supply of water and an artificial atmosphere would be little different from growing them on space stations, which has been done several times; although outside Earth's protective magnetic field they would be subject to higher levels of radiation.

Esa has made no firm plans yet to explore the lunar surface

The new step, taken in the experiments reported at the EGU, is to remove the need for bringing nutrients and soil from Earth.

A team led by Natasha Kozyrovska and Iryna Zaetz from the National Academy of Sciences in Kiev planted marigolds in crushed anorthosite, a type of rock found on Earth which is very similar to much of the lunar surface.

In neat anorthosite, the plants fared very badly. But adding different types of bacteria made them thrive; the bacteria appeared to draw elements from the rock that the plants needed, such as potassium.

Dr Foing, who presented the study at the EGU meeting, said there was no reason in principle why the same idea could not bear fruit on the Moon itself. Tools could crush lunar rock and add bacteria and seeds.

But, he added, scientists could look to go further, by selecting plants or bacteria that are especially well adapted to lunar conditions, or even by genetically engineering new strains.

Descent of man?

The last decade has seen a revival of interest in Moon exploration after years of neglect.

It is conceivable humans may one day live on the Moon

Europe's Smart 1 probe with its innovative ion engine ended its mission in 2006 with a deliberate crash onto the lunar surface.

China's Chang'e 1 and Japan's Kaguya (or Selene) orbiters both began operations last year, while India's Chandrayaan 1 is due for launch within months.

The US, meanwhile, is committed to putting human feet back on lunar soil by 2020.

But Esa is not yet sure about further Moon missions; a decision on whether to proceed with a concept called Moon Next, which would probably deploy a roving vehicle in about 2015, will be taken later this year.

Even if that gets the go-ahead, some Esa officials at the EGU meeting suggested that planting marigolds (or tulips or cabbages) would be unlikely to be part of the strategy: "it is science fiction," one observed.

But as director of the International Lunar Exploration Working Group (ILEWG), which looks for exciting and innovative ways to study our nearest cosmic neighbour, Bernard Foing believes that Europe or one of the other players will eventually decide to plant the seeds of Earth where previously humanity has merely planted flags.

"We are considering whether we could do this on some precursor robotic mission, even before we consider putting people on the Moon," he said.

"It is viable within the timeframe of Moon Next."

Richard.Black-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

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German whizzkid got it wrong: NASA

Enlarge Photo

This artist's rendition released by NASA shows an asteroid belt. It was an incredible tale...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - It was an incredible tale of a German schoolboy spotting a miscalculation by the US space agency, proving the chances of an asteroid hitting the Earth were higher than initially believed.

But the amazing story of the whizzkid versus the space bureaucracy turned out to be wrong, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said Wednesday.

The agency, sounding a bit like a weary math teacher, said its figures are correct when it comes to the asteroid Apophis, not the boy's.

"We stand by our numbers," NASA spokesman Dwayne Brown told AFP.

The agency that oversees space shuttle missions and unmanned space probes issued a statement after the German newspaper Potsdamer Neuerster Nachrichten reported on Tuesday that student Nico Marquardt had calculated there was a 1 in 450 chance that the Apophis asteroid will collide with Earth.

He argued in his project for a regional science competition that scientists at NASA had got it wrong when they estimated the chances of a collision at only 1 in 45,000.

But experts at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California had no doubts about their calculations, Brown said.

The Near-Earth Object Program Office "has not changed its current estimates for the very low probability (1 in 45,000) of an Earth impact by the asteroid Apophis in 2036," Brown said in a statement.

And the newspaper's account was also inaccurate when it described NASA telling the European Space Agency that the German student's calculations were correct, Brown said.

"Contrary to recent press reports, NASA offices involved in near-Earth object research were not contacted and have had no correspondence with a young German student, who claims the Apophis impact probability is far higher than the current estimate," the statement said.

The student's estimates were reportedly based on the asteroid hitting a satellite in 2029.

"However, the asteroid will not pass near the main belt of geosynchronous satellites in 2029, and the chance of a collision with a satellite is exceedingly remote," it said.

While the German newspaper article had spread across the Internet, NASA said the probability of Apophis colliding with Earth remained at 1 in 45,000.

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Using mind control to make flies sing

The female fly sang the male fly's song when a laser was flashed at it


An Oxford scientist has used mind control to make female flies belt out male love songs, revealing they have a hidden capacity for masculine behaviour.

The research, which suggests that the sexes are not quite so different as they seem, exploits a remote control method that could provide revolutionary insights into behaviour.

Professor Gero Miesenböck of Oxford University is sometimes nicknamed the "lord of the flies" after remarkable work he pioneered in America to use laser light to control fly brains with the flick of a switch. He has now applied his mind control methods to exploring fly sexuality.

Three years ago, he caused a buzz when he showed he could trigger certain actions in flies from a distance by shining light on them. The flies are genetically engineered so that only the brain cells of interest were made responsive to light.

When the laser flashed it activated these brain cells and could make flies jump, walk, fly or, in the present case, produce a 'love song'.

Male fruit flies usually 'sing' to attract females, vibrating one wing to produce a distinctive sound which females like because they then allow copulation.

By tweaking one set of nerve cells thought to control this behaviour, the so called fru neurons, Professor Miesenböck has shown that female fruit flies can be made to 'sing' too.

"You might expect that the brains of the two sexes would be built differently, but that does not seem to be the case," says Prof Miesenböck. "Instead, it appears there is a largely bisexual or 'unisex brain' with a few critical switches that make the difference between male and female behaviour."

"The fact that we could make females vibrate one wing to produce a courtship song - a behaviour never before seen in female flies - shows that the brain circuits for this male behaviour are present in the female brain, even though they are never used for that purpose,' says Miesenböck.

Although the work suggests the circuitry for male behaviour exists in female brains and simply lies dormant, the 'song' was not quite as good as the males'.

"If you look carefully, the females do sound different," he says. "They have a different pitch and rhythm and aren't as well controlled." He thinks those distinctions probably stem from real, if subtle, differences between the male and female brains.

Despite this off key note, the study poses a profound puzzle. "The mystery at the root of our study is the neuronal basis of differences in male and female behaviour. Anatomically, the differences are subtle. How is it that the neural equipment is so similar, but the sexes behave so differently?

The new findings suggest that flies must harbour key nodes or "master switches" that set the whole brain to the male or female mode, according to the researchers. Their next goal is to find those controls.

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