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Why Future Space Farms Depend on Plants Grown in Antarctica - The Daily Beast

Why Future Space Farms Depend on Plants Grown in Antarctica - The Daily Beast

Why Future Space Farms Depend on Plants Grown in Antarctica - The Daily Beast
May 20, 2022 1 min, 6 secs

In 1902, British physician and botanist Reginald Koettlitz was the first person to grow food in Antarctic soils.

This early experiment demonstrated that Antarctic soil could be productive, and also pointed to the nutritional advantages of fresh food during polar expeditions.

Since it was impossible to grow plants outside, some people living at these stations took it upon themselves to build greenhouses to provide both food and emotional well-being.

By using hydroponic techniques in greenhouses, plant production facilities weren’t using the Antarctic environment to grow crops at all.

Starting in the 1960s, scientists working for organizations like NASA began thinking of the hostile, extreme and alien Antarctic as a convenient analog for space exploration, where nations could test space technologies and protocols, including plant production.

In 2014, NASA astronauts installed the Vegetable Production System aboard the International Space Station to study plant growth in microgravity.

Just as in Antarctic history, the question of how to grow plants is central to any discussion of possible human settlements on the Moon or Mars.

People eventually abandoned efforts to cultivate the harsh Antarctic landscape for food production and turned to artificial technologies and environments to do so.

But after over a century of practice and using the most modern techniques, the food grown in Antarctica has never been able to support many people for very long.

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