Israel teams up with Australia to grow plants on Moon by 2025 under its lunar mission

Scientists from Australia and Israel have teamed up to grow plants on the Moon by 2025, thus ensuring food security for the planned lunar colonies. Seeds of a few plants will be sent on the Beresheet 2 spacecraft which is targeted for launch in 2025 as part of Israel's Moon mission. According to plant biologist Brett Williams from the Queensland University of Technology, the seeds will be watered inside a sealed chamber and their germination and growth will be monitored.

Williams further revealed that the plants will be chosen based on their ability to survive hostile conditions and their rate of growth. The Australian "resurrection grass" has emerged as the favourite candidate as it can survive without water even in its dormant state. 

(Illustration of the Beresheet lander; Image: Israel Space Agency)

"The project is an early step towards growing plants for food, medicine and oxygen production, which are all crucial to establishing human life on the moon", the researchers said in an official statement announcing the mission. "If you can create a system for growing plants on the moon, then you can create a system for growing food in some of the most challenging environments on Earth", said Caitlin Byrt, an Associate Professor from the Australian National University in Canberra, as per Phys.org, who also called the research essential for food security on Earth. 

It is worth noting, however, that China has already accomplished crop production on the Moon during its Chang'e-4 mission. Called the Lunar biosphere experiment, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) partnered with 28 universities to grow plants out of rapeseed, potato seeds and cotton seeds. 

In May this year, NASA also achieved a major milestone in growing plants in the lunar soil brought from the Moon during the Apollo missions. Although the plants' growth was stunted, it is considered a breakthrough in ensuring crop production on the lunar surface. 

(Plants grown in lunar regolith; Image: NASA)

Israel Beresheet 2

The Beresheet 2 mission, meanwhile, would be Israel's second attempt to land on the Moon after the first one (Beresheet) failed in 2019. Built by SpaceIL and Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), the Beresheet was a privately funded mission but its spacecraft crashed on the Moon on April 11 after losing contact roughly 489 feet (149 meters) above the surface. Moving forward, Israel has again developed the second mission with the help of private partners and is eyeing its launch in 2025, delayed from 2024.

According to the Israeli agency, the second mission would involve a lander-orbiter combination "with an aim to conduct a double landing on the Moon and continue in orbit for five years as a platform for education science activities".