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Astronaut Mark Watney is stranded on Mars and must somehow find a way to grow potatoes in the planet’s unforgiving, ochre soil before he starves. This is the plot of The Martian, which is very much a work of fiction. But for a real-life space botanist, look no further than .

Her skills might soon be in demand. After all, the recent Artemis II mission that circled the moon is a reminder that NASA is working towards a permanent base on the lunar surface. Sending pre-packaged food up from Earth may be enough to feed those living there for a while. But to make a moon base truly self-sustaining, its astronauts will need to grow their own crops.

Doing so is a tall order: in addition to colonists needing to mine the moon’s reserves of water ice to hydrate their crops, the harsh, volcanic lunar dust, or regolith, is remarkably hostile to plant life. That’s where Atkin, who is based at Texas A&M University, comes in. She recently showed that lunar regolith spiked with an alchemic mixture of organic matter and a special sort of fungus seems to allow chickpeas to sprout. The powers that be have taken notice: she has been awarded a large NASA grant to carry on with her research and crack how to grow veg on the moon.

�鶹��ý spoke to Atkin about setting up a laboratory in her own house, her dreams of lunar greenhouses – and what kind of meals future lunar astronauts can look forward to.

Robin George Andrews: Why did you choose to study space botany?

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Jessica Atkin: Some of my earliest memories are in a strawberry patch with my grandmother – and probably snacking on one or two along the way – so my connection to plants started quite early in childhood. Similarly, I’ve always loved space. I was raised by cowboys, and I would sit out on my tractor on the ranch every night, look at the moon and just think to myself: if we wanted to grow plants there, what would we do? On Earth, plants don’t grow alone. We need microbes. If they can help us colonise Earth, why can’t they help us colonise the moon? Nature gives us all the answers; we’ve just got to figure it all out.

But before entering academia, you served in the US armed forces.

The military was not the long-term plan. I knew if I was going to go to college, I wasn’t going to rely on my family to fund it. So, I said OK, what can I do? I knew if I put in my four years, the military could cover an undergraduate degree. I was a police officer. They sent me to Iraq to train the Iraqi police. When I came home, I was a firearms instructor. But I knew that lifestyle wasn’t for me. It’s not necessarily something I align with, but it did teach me a lot.

Why should we try to grow crops in lunar regolith, as opposed to shipping Earth soil up to the moon?

It could be up to $100,000 to send a pound [roughly half a kilogram] of any given material to the moon. So, we can’t really send soil. We are going to have to send prepacked meals, and we are going to have to use hydroponics, . But we should probably be investing in ways to do things to try to have a permanent presence.

Lunar regolith – the moon’s “soil” – is abysmal for agriculture, though, isn’t it?

There are so many issues with it. First, the structure is awful. The grains are small, sharp and positively charged – it , and it’s so sharp, it’ll cut micro-tears in plants. It even cuts micro-tears in astronauts’ suits. It’s a problem when you breathe it in. When you try to water something that’s like a baby powder, it forms like a cement, so it can’t trickle down to the plant roots – so everything suffocates.

Then there’s the chemical composition. It does have a lot of the things plants need: phosphorus, potassium, calcium, magnesium and trace micronutrients. Iron is also present and essential, but can be toxic to plants in high amounts. And there is a lot of aluminium, which is awful because it stunts plants’ growth.

What have scientists done in the past to try to grow crops in lunar regolith?

There was a University of Florida team that showed you in genuine lunar regolith brought back by the Apollo missions. It was stressed out, but it was amazing to show that plants can grow in real regolith. Organic material has been added to lunar-simulant soil, too. But when I started, microorganisms were largely ignored. Hold on, I thought, we’re missing a huge component.

And that’s where your work comes in…

I knew fungi were a key component of helping plants colonise land on Earth, so I wanted to explore whether that same partnership could help plants establish themselves in lunar regolith. If fungi helped plants build a foothold here on Earth, it made sense to see if they could help us do the same on the moon.

Why did you focus on chickpeas as a potential lunar crop?

They’re not your typical model crop. People grow lettuces, tomatoes – but legumes are largely ignored. They’re full of protein, and you’re going to need more than just lettuce if you’re going to keep everyone strong and healthy. Chickpeas also send out signals to recruit microorganisms to come work with them. They’re stress-tolerant; they don’t want to be watered that much. They don’t want to be bothered. Put them in the worst situation, and that’s where they do well.

Before you were awarded a prestigious NASA grant, you set up a plant lab in your own house, is that right?

It was in my living room!

Why did you need to set up a lab at home?

Back when I started this, in 2020, 2021, this kind of experiment wasn’t really what was done, and I wasn’t at a school where there were a lot of space people. Still, my professor at Texas A&M works on plant-microbe interactions and was willing to work with me on my idea. We wrote a proposal to NASA to try to get funding. The agency said the idea was great, but we didn’t have enough preliminary data. So, I bought all the supplies and did it myself.

Did you manage to use actual lunar regolith retrieved by the Apollo missions?

There is genuine regolith down at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, but they give that out very sparingly. I used made from moon-like volcanic rocks found on Earth that replicates the upcoming Artemis landing sites, the lunar highlands. I gathered the preliminary data, wrote another grant to NASA, and that’s what was awarded.

Since then, you’ve moved into fully fledged laboratories to run your . How did they turn out?

We used fungi and different amounts of compost to see how much organic matter we need to get a healthy plant and healthy microbes. We found the mixtures of organic matter and fungi where the plants did best and formed the strongest symbiosis. It’s kind of wild that the chickpeas germinated quicker [than in terrestrial soil]. That said, any plant that was in regolith was stressed out; they do produce fewer seeds. I’m having the seeds tested at [Pennsylvania State University] right now to find out if they are toxic or not. I hope they’re not toxic, but even if they are, that’s not necessarily a bad thing because it means we’re biomining – the plants are taking these metals out of the regolith. For me, the point of this work isn’t the chickpea at all; it’s that we’re transforming this regolith into lunar soil, so we can put other plants in it.

Let’s say we have a moon base set up with a breathable atmosphere and filtered water. What challenges might we have in turning that into a lunar vegetable patch?

We’re going to have much more radiation than they’re used to on the ISS, and instead of microgravity, we’ll have one-sixth of Earth’s gravity. That could change how we water the plants. And we’re going to have to supplement lighting: we’ll have two weeks of lunar day, but then two weeks of lunar night. Also, astronauts don’t want regolith brought inside the habitat. They’ll want a separate greenhouse, so nobody’s ever exposed to the health hazards of lunar dust.

What about the protein-based parts of the human diet, like meat and fish?

Chickpeas have almost everything you need to replace that. I think that, for the foreseeable future, the protein-based part of an astronaut’s diet is going to be coming from shelf-stable, prepackaged foods.

At least they’ll be able to make space hummus, right? You just mix the ingredients in a blender.

There are not a lot of ways to cook in space. You need things to be eaten fresh. I always joke to my friends that I’m trying to open a falafel stand on the moon.

So, what’s the fanciest meal a lunar astronaut might feasibly have, grown from a lunar greenhouse?

Honestly, I would be going for sweet stuff, like fruits. I know they’ve been testing . NASA has been how well strawberries grow in space-station-like lab environments on Earth, while strawberry have been sent up to the ISS to examine how spaceflight affects their growth.

How do you feel about being called a lunar botanist?

It makes it hard to find a job. It’s so niche.

But if the Artemis programme proceeds as planned, surely NASA will need all the space botanists it can get, right?

That’s my hope! I’m just waiting for these positions to open. It’s so hard to create one-sixth gravity on Earth, or even in space. We need to get to the moon to actually test these things out. That’s my end goal. But I’m happy to contribute to the mission in any way I can, whether it’s on Earth or, hopefully, in space.

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If NASA asked you to go to the moon to set up a lunar greenhouse, what would you say?

That’s the dream. I can tell them what size spacesuit I’d need – please just let me tag along. I joke that I’d be a moon janitor. I’d go up there and clean up the metals.

You’ve previously spoken about how your grandmother’s greenhouse helped spark your great interest in botany and agriculture when you were younger. Is she still around today?

She’s not – but she would be proud. She was always proud of me, for anything I did, as grandmas are. But she would just be tickled. She wouldn’t be surprised, though. I’ve always done the most random things.