Scientists find desert moss ‘that can survive on Mars’

While Matt Damon relied on potatoes grown in his crew’s biowaste in the hit film The Martian, researchers say it’s a simple desert moss that could be crucial to the emergence of life on Mars.

Scientists in China say they have found it Syntrichia dogfish – a moss found in areas such as Antarctica and the Mojave Desert – can withstand conditions similar to those on Mars, such as dryness, high radiation levels and extreme cold.

Syntrichia caninervis. Photo: Lee Rentz/Alamy

According to the team, their work is the first to investigate the survival of entire plants in such an environment, and the research also focuses on the possibility of growing plants on the Earth’s surface, rather than in greenhouses.

“The unique insights we gained in our research provide the basis for colonization of space using naturally selected plants adapted to extreme stress conditions,” the team writes.

Professor Stuart McDaniel, a moss expert at the University of Florida who was not involved in the research, suggested the idea had merit.

“Cultivating terrestrial plants is an important part of any long-duration space mission, because plants efficiently convert carbon dioxide and water into oxygen and carbohydrates – essentially the air and food humans need to survive. Desert moss is not edible, but it could provide other important services in space,” he said.

Dr. Agata Zupanska of the SETI Institute agreed. She says moss can help enrich and transform the rocky material on the surface of Mars so that other plants can grow.

“Otherwise, moss is not tasty and is not a great addition to the salad,” she said.

Writing in the journal The Innovation , researchers in China describe how the desert moss not only survived but also quickly recovered from near-complete desiccation. It was also able to regenerate under normal growing conditions after spending up to five years at -80C and up to 30 days at -196C, and after exposure to gamma radiation, with doses of around 500Gy even promoting new growth.

The team then created a setup with similar pressures, temperatures, gases and UV radiation as Mars. It found that the moss survived in this Mars-like environment and was able to regenerate under normal growing conditions, even after seven days of exposure. The team also noted that plants that had been dried before such exposure performed better.

“Looking to the future, we expect that this promising moss could be brought to Mars or the moon to further test the possibility of plant colonization and growth in space,” the researchers write.

McDaniel noted that most plants cannot withstand the stresses of space travel.

“This paper is exciting because it shows that desert moss can survive short exposures to stressors likely to be present during a journey to Mars, including very high radiation levels, very cold temperatures, and very low oxygen levels,” he said.

But he admitted the study had limitations.

“These experiments represent an important first step, but they do not demonstrate that the moss could be a significant source of oxygen under Martian conditions, nor do they show that the desert moss could reproduce and multiply in the Martian context,” McDaniel said.

Zupanska added that the study did not test the impact of particle radiation, among other things.

“I think we’re getting close to growing plants in alien greenhouses, and moss certainly has a place in that,” she said. “It’s an overstatement to imply that moss, or any other pioneering species, is ready to terraform Mars, or any other outer planet.”

Dr. Wieger Wamelink of Wageningen University also raised concerns, including that temperatures on the red planet rarely rise above freezing, making outdoor plant growth impossible, while the new study did not use Martian-like soil.

“The mosses were treated for a maximum of a few days under Martian conditions and then grown back on sand under Earth conditions,” he said. “This of course does not prove at all that they can grow under Martian conditions.”

However, Professor Edward Guinan of Villanova University in the US called the research impressive.

“This extremotolerant moss could be a promising pioneer plant for the colonization of Mars,” he said, although he noted that the moss would need water to grow.

“We still have a long way to go,” he said. “But this simple desert moss offers hope for making small parts of Mars habitable for humanity in the future.”

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