A professor at the Liceo Scientifico G. Battaglini in Taranto is responsible for the innovative project to cultivate plants in a simulated Martian regolith. With the collaboration of IAPS researcher Francesca Altieri, the students were able to experiment with Vicia faba maior (common broad bean) by creating a semi-controlled environment to reproduce the conditions found on the red planet. The Mars Simulant for Plants (MSP-1), aims to replicate the mineralogical characteristics of the Martian regolith, while the growth chamber equipped with insulating, reflective walls housed the fava bean seed for almost two months, watered with demineralised water to mimic the water potentially extractable from the surface of Mars.
‘Red planet, green thumb’, an example of successful integration between school and research world.
Read the full article and the results of the experiment here.
The Martian simulant MSP-1, composed mainly of basalt
The growth chamber