Seeds Have Sprouted on the Moon for the First Time

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/2182111/chinese-lunar-landers-cotton-seeds-lead-way-plant-life-germinates

China’s miniature biosphere experiment has yielded sprouting cotton seeds, and they are the first plants to germinate on the Moon—an important first step in creating a viable, self-sustaining lunar colony.

China’s Chang’e 4 lander arrived on the Moon’s far side on January 3, 2018. Among its cargo is a miniature lunar biosphere developed by scientists at Chongqing University. This experiment consists of a 7-inch-long, airtight container filled with soil, air, water, various seeds, yeast, and fruit fly eggs. Together, these components are meant to kickstart a simple ecosystem, the purpose of which is to test the viability of sustaining a future colony on the Moon. A built-in heat system facilitates growth and prevents the biological material from freezing, reports the Xinhua news agency, while two small cameras allow for observations.

An image released today by the China National Space Administration showed green cotton shoots reaching upward from a lattice inside the canister, reports the South China Morning Post. It’s the first time—as far as we know—that a plant has germinated on a Solar System object other than Earth.

Who is going to pick it?...Are slave spaceships in route?

HFB wrote:

Who is going to pick it?...Are slave spaceships in route?

When they can grow cattle up there, I'll be really impressed.

China's Moon Plants Are Dead
By Mike Wall, Space.com Senior Writer | January 16, 2019 05:23pm ET

The moon is a lifeless world once again.

The cotton plants that sprouted on the moon's far side aboard China's Chang'e 4 lander are dead, done in by the bitter cold of the lengthy lunar night, GBTimes reported today (Jan. 16).

These photosynthesizing pioneers were part of Chang'e 4's biological experiment, which also included seeds of potato, rapeseed and Arabidopsis plants, as well as fruit-fly eggs and yeast. These organisms were encased in a 5.7-lb. (2.6 kilograms) canister, which touched town on the lunar far side with the Chang'e 4 lander-rover duo on the night of Jan. 2.

The experiment — which began just hours after the historic touchdown inside the far side's 115-mile-wide (186 kilometers) Von Kármán Crater — aimed to assess how plants and animals grow and develop in the alien lunar environment. The moon's surface features low gravity, high radiation levels and extreme temperature swings.

The cotton seeds were able to handle these harsh conditions, at least initially, becoming the first plants ever to sprout on the surface of another world. (Chinese space officials haven't said how the other organisms did.)

But the canister apparently does not have a battery-powered heater, so the onset of the lunar night over the weekend spelled doom for the cotton sprouts, GBTimes reported. (It takes the moon about 27 Earth days to complete one rotation, so day and night on our nearest neighbor each last two weeks. This rotational period, by the way, matches the moon's orbital period — the time it takes to complete one lap around Earth. That's why we only get to see the near side, and the lunar far side is forever out of view.)

"Liu Hanlong, head of the experiment at Chongqing University, said at a Chongqing government press conference on Tuesday that the temperature inside the 1-liter-capacity canister had reached minus 52 degrees Celsius [minus 62 degrees Fahrenheit] and the experiment had ended" after 212.75 hours, Andrew Jones wrote in the GBTimes story.

The dead plants will rot after day breaks over Von Kármán late this month. But the canister is an enclosed system, so the decaying material will not leak onto the lunar surface, Chinese space officials said.

Though Chang'e 4 team members have touted the biological experiment's potential to help pave the way for future lunar settlement, it isn't a core scientific payload for the mission. In 2015, Chinese space officials asked students around the country to submit ideas for a payload to fly aboard Chang'e 4. The minibiosphere was the winning entrant out of more than 250 proposals, according to China's state-run Xinhua news agency.

The Chang'e 4 lander and rover are gathering detailed data about the surface and near subsurface of Von Kármán Crater. This information is relayed back to Earth via a satellite called Queqiao, which China launched to a gravitationally stable spot beyond the moon in May 2018.

Chang'e 4 is part of China's ambitious program of robotic lunar exploration. The nation launched the Chang'e 1 and Chang'e 2 moon orbiters in 2007 and 2010, respectively, and put the Chang'e 3 lander-rover pair on the lunar near side in December 2013.

If all goes according to plan, China will launch the Chang'e 5 sample-return mission sometime this year.

The cotton seeds are not the first plants ever to sprout off Earth. Astronauts have tended a variety of minigardens in Earth orbit, aboard Russia's Mir space station, the International Space Station and China's Tiangong-2 space lab.

NASA photo pinpoints location of Chinese spacecraft on far side of moon
By Bradford Betz | Fox News | 51 minutes ago



NASA photographs first image of Chinese spacecraft on far side of the moon. (NASA)

NASA has released an image that pinpoints the location of Chang’e 4, the Chinese spacecraft which made the unprecedented achievement earlier this year of landing on the “dark side” of the moon.

Nearly four weeks after Chang’e 4 landed on the Moon’s Von Karman crater, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter snapped a photo more than 200 miles from the landing site. The crater runs 12,800 feet across and is 1,970 feet deep, according to NASA.

The photo, released Wednesday by NASA, captures the crater and the vast floor that surrounds it. To the west of the crater is a wall rising nearly 10,000 feet above the floor, according to NASA.

The small rover which detached from Chang’e 4 is hardly detectable in the grainy image because of the overwhelming distance captured in the frame.

In the bottom right of the photo are two arrows pointing to a few pixels of what is apparently the rover. Another photo, blown up to better see the area surrounding the rover, reveals another crater that measures 1,440 feet across, NASA said.

https://www.foxnews.com/science/nasa-photo-shows-area-where-chinese-spacecraft-landed-on-far-side-of-moon