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To simulate a gardening experience on the Red Planet, researchers at NASA's Kennedy Space Center and the Florida Tech Buzz Aldrin Space Institute have begun to experiment with "Martian gardens," using soil from Hawaii similar to the type of soil found on Mars. Martian soil is made up of crushed volcanic rock and contains no organic material, making plant survival significantly more difficult.
To gauge how much soil should be used and which nutrients should be added, researchers grew lettuce in three different types of soil: virtual Martian soil with no nutrients added, virtual Martian soil with nutrients added, and regular potting soil. They reported that the lettuce grown in the Mars-like soil with no nutrients added tasted the same, but had weaker roots and took longer to grow.
Next, they plan to conduct similar experiments with radishes, Swiss chard, kale, Chinese cabbage, snow peas, dwarf peppers and tomatoes.
Potatoes, guys, potatoes.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Sunday October 09 2016, @07:49PM
Terraforming on Mars is going to depend on atmosphere domes (of one sort or another). Don't expect any open atmosphere, because the gravity's not strong enough and ionization keeps kicking the light molecules away from the planet. (And water is one of the things you lose fastest.) If you *did* put a breathable atmosphere on the planet, it wouldn't stay there more than a few centuries.
Because of this the atmosphere used to grow the plants doesn't really need to be the same as the one that people live in. It probably will be for simplicity, but if desirable you could adjust it to be higher or lower in, say, humidity or CO2. The plants aren't going to be growing in untreated Martian air.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.