Planting flowers on the moon

A company that designs habitats for organisms in areas with weak gravity is hoping to bring the first flowering plants to the moon.

Paragon Space Development - a US-based company - will build a greenhouse to put on the Moon using an autonomous probe built by Odyssey Moon. Odyssey Moon is one of the companies participating in the Lunar X Prize competition, a robot-led moon contest.

Greenhouse will be used to nourish mustard seeds on the moon. Paragon Space Development hopes these seeds will germinate and bloom. They believe that the flowers on the moon will become a symbolic image in the history of human conquest of the universe.

The team also identified that greenhouses to plant trees will be the first step in the effort to exploit the moon. 'It was originally a mustard seed, but maybe someday someone will live on the moon,' said Bob Richards, founder of Odyssey Moon.

However, designing a greenhouse capable of nourishing trees on the moon is not an easy task, especially when it must be transparent enough to be photographed. The test product released by Paragon Space Development on March 27 is a glass-dome-shaped glass structure. It has a diameter of 9 cm, a height of 30 cm - enough space for 6 mustard trees.

But the design team will have to fix this greenhouse so it can protect the tree from cosmic radiation and the terrible temperature difference on the moon (temperatures reach more than 100 ° C during the day, but there are can be reduced to -170 ° C at night).

To help plants resist the cold at night on the moon (equivalent to 14 days on Earth), the design team decided to use the fastest-growing mustard seed. These particles can grow and bloom in exactly one day of the moon (equivalent to two weeks on earth).

However, because mustard seeds have a very fast growth rate, they can grow into plants and bloom when the robot lands on the moon. So the design team will have to think of a way to keep the flower long.

The time to put the greenhouse on the Moon has not been fixed. To win the Lunar X Prize, Odyssey Moon must be the first company to bring an autonomous probe to the moon. The device must be able to travel at least 500 meters and send images to the earth. The deadline for 2014. Meanwhile, Odyssey Moon wants to put the probe at the end of 2011 to win the $ 20 million prize of this competition.

The Lunar X Prize is a competition to bring self-propelled probes to the moon organized by Google. 90% of the cost of designing robots must be privately funded. The total value of the contest prize is 30 million USD. The $ 20 million reward will be given to the company (or individual) first to bring the device to visit the moon before 2012. After 2012, the reward value is only $ 15 million.