NASA's Going Moon Gardening

Two years from now, there may well be a turnip garden sprouting forth from a tiny sealed pod on the surface of the moon. NASA launched a proposal to send a self-contained and turnip-filled habitat as a payload along with the next lunar lander. The idea is to use turnips, as NASA puts it, as a "canary in a coal mine" to see if life can survive on the lunar surface—and to determine whether future colonists could grow edible crops during a long-term lunar occupation.

NASA says that it's a "first step in long term presence is to send plants. As seedlings, they can be as sensitive as humans to environmental conditions, sometimes even more so. They carry genetic material that can be damaged by radiation as can that of humans."

That moon mission, interestingly, is likely to be helmed not by NASA, but by an internet company. NASA wants to send the experiment along with the Moon Express lander, the winner of the Google Lunar X-prize competition.

"After landing in late 2015, water will be added to the seeds in the module and their growth will be monitored for 5-10 days," NASA says. "Seeds will include Arabidopsis, basil, and turnips. This will be the first life sciences experiment on another world and an important first step in the utilization of plants for human life support."

The initiative is expected to cost $2 million, a paltry sum in context of the gains that stood to be made.

As NASA says, "If we send plants and they thrive, then we probably can."