China Grows the First Seed on the Moon

The moon is an inhospitable place. In the sunlight, temperatures hit highs of 260 degrees Fahrenheit, in the dark, it can reach a miserable minus 280. Radiation is high and water is scarce. But according to the China National Space Administration, there is now life growing 240,000 miles from the Earth; cotton seeds carried on board the Chang’e-4 lunar lander have just sprouted, making them the first plants to ever germinate on another world. “We have given consideration to future survival in space. Learning about these plants’ growth in a low-gravity environment would allow us to lay the foundation for our future establishment of space base,” Liu Hanlong, the scientist leading the experiment, told the South China Morning Post. The Chinese Communist Party’s official newspaper, The People’s Daily hailed the achievement as “humankind’s first biological experiment on the moon”. First in human history: A cotton seed brought to the moon by China's Chang'e 4 probe has sprouted, the latest test photo has shown, marking the completion of humankind's first biological experiment on the moon pic.twitter.com/CSSbgEoZmC — People's Daily, China (@PDChina) January 15, 2019 Chang’e-4 was launched in early December from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan province. It is the only vessel to have landed on the dark side of the moon. According to China’s state-run Xinhua news agency, grou...
Source: TIME: Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Uncategorized China onetime space Source Type: news