Nasa plans on sending the seedlings to the moon by hitching a lift on a commercial spacecraft called the Moon Express lander, which is competing to win Google’s Lunar X-Prize in 2017.

Scientists are currently constructing a unit to study the germination of the plants, which will have a mass of just one kilogram and will be deposited on the moon.

Water will be added to the seeds in the module after landing and their growth will be monitored for five to 10 days and compared to Earth-based control seedlings.

Seeds will include Arabidopsis, basil, and turnips and Nasa says the experiment will be the first of its kind on another world and ‘an important first step in the utilisation of plants for human life support’.

Follow-up experiments will improve the technology in the growth module and allow for more extensive plant experiments, the organisation said.

Survival for 14 days demonstrates plants can sprout in the moon’s radiation environment but survival to 60 days demonstrates that sexual reproduction (meiosis) can occur in a lunar environment.

Survival to 180 days shows effects of radiation on dominant and recessive genetic traits and afterwards, the experiment may run for months through multiple generations, increasing science return.

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人类未来能否在月球上生活？科学家打算先尝试在月球种菜。据英国《每日邮报》网站12月1日报道，美国国家航空航天局

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