Seeds on Mars: "Arabidopsis thaliana" will be the first plant on the Red Planet

The winner of Mars One University competition will help in bringing life to Mars. Yes, you read it right! The competition organised by Mars One was aimed at selecting a payload that will fly to Mars. Mars One has planned their first unmanned mission to mars in 2018 and the 'Seed' was selected through popular vote from about 35 proposals from various universities. This was the first time general public was asked to select which payload will get an opportunity to land on Mars. Co-founder and CTO of Mars One, Arno Wielders said that Mars One team was pleased with the quality of the proposals they received and the amount of preparation that went into preparing them.

Note that Mars has an extreme atmosphere for long-term human life. Seed team envisions that plants are key to settlement of human base on the red planet because of their capacity to create oxygen and food. The team proposes that their payload will be of two parts: an external container and an internal one. The first container will have multi-layer insulation sheets that will act as primary protection against the harsh environmental conditions. The internal container will house several seed cassettes. This concept has already been used multiple times on the ISS. The plant model chosen for the mission is Arabidopsis thaliana, which is one of the most common space plant used by NASA for studies done at the ISS.

Seed-Mars-One

Once the MarsOne lander has been deployed on the surface of Mars, the cassettes will be heated and a growth medium will be injected on the filter (inside the cassette). This growth medium will provide suitable conditions for the germination and growth of the seedling. Cameras will photograph the entire process and keep sending updates to the ground control station back to Earth. Once the experiment is over, the growth of the seedling will be terminated by turning off the temperature control system.

More about this winning project can be read on the official Mars One website linked in the source below.

Source: #-Link-Snipped-#

Replies

  • Ankita Katdare
    Ankita Katdare
    Just imagine what it would be like if the human race gets destroyed from a natural calamity, washed off the face of Earth and then only a handful of people who survive build spaceships of the future (interstellar like) and when they land on MARS, the red planet, they find big trees grown out of these seeds that Mars One is sending in 2018.
    Now that would be something! 😍 Just feeling optimistic.
  • Ramani Aswath
    Ramani Aswath
    The happiest person may be Amma, the deposed CM of Tamilnadu. It looks like her party symbol.

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