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Enlarge image Future lunar colonists may grow cyanobacteria in greenhouses supplied with water, sunlight and lunar soil (Illustration: NASA/John Frassanito and Associates) A hardy life form called cyanobacteria can grow in otherwise inhospitable lunar soil, new experiments suggest. Future colonists on the Moon might be able to use the cyanobacteria to extract resources from the soil that could be used to make rocket fuel and fertiliser for crops. NASA plans to send astronauts back to the Moon starting in 2020, with the ultimate aim of setting up a permanent lunar base. Sustaining such a base will be a major challenge, because it is so costly to fly food, fuel and other supplies there with rockets launched from Earth. Every kilogram of resources that could be produced on the Moon itself could therefore help cut costs, making such a base easier to maintain. That is where cyanobacteria and their amazing abilities come in.
"It will not be able to support the growth of tomatoes" or other food plants, says Igor Brown of NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas, US. But experiments led by Brown show that some cyanobacteria are perfectly happy growing on lunar soil, if supplied with water, air and light. Brown and his colleagues tried growing a variety of species of cyanobacteria on materials designed to approximate the lunar soil.
Hot springs The cyanobacteria were taken from hot springs in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, US. When put in a container with water and simulated lunar soil, the cyanobacteria were found to produce acids that are amazingly good at breaking down tough minerals, including ilmenite. They use the nutrients freed up this way to grow and reproduce. Breaking down the same minerals artificially would require heating them to very high temperatures, which uses enormous amounts of energy, he says. Cyanobacteria, on the other hand, use only sunlight for energy, though they do their extraction work more slowly than heating the soil artificially. Although several species were able to grow on the simulated lunar soil, one in particular stood out as being the most efficient in breaking down the tough minerals it contained. This species turned out to be new to science, and the researchers have named it JSC-12. Hydroponic greenhouses Brown says he envisions growth chambers for cyanobacteria being set up on the Moon, as part of a multi-step process for making use of the resources bound in the lunar soil. The chambers would be supplied with water, sunlight and lunar soil to allow the cyanobacteria to grow. Cyanobacteria harvested from the chambers could then be further processed to make use of the elements they extract from the lunar soil. For example, they could be broken down by other bacteria, resulting in a nutrient-rich soup that could be used as fertiliser for food plants grown in hydroponic greenhouses. Methane given off by the breakdown of the cyanobacteria could be used as rocket fuel. Further in the future, iron and other elements extracted from the soil by cyanobacteria could be collected and concentrated, supplying metal for building machines and other products on the Moon, Brown says. The researchers are now trying to determine how to grow the cyanobacteria with the least possible effort. "We're learning how to cultivate cyanobacteria in the minimum conditions," he says. The results of the cyanobacteria experiments were presented on Tuesday at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston, Texas, US. Comment subject Comment No HTML except lower case italic tags or lower case bold tags, please: <i> or <b> Your name Your email We need your email in case we need to contact you about the comment.
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