Gardening on Mars

I'm very proud to announce that, thanks to team leader/idea creator Shannon Bohle and other contributors, the first paper I've worked on concerning Martian soil and food production is in print in News and Reviews in Astronomy and Geophysics  Thank you, everyone!


OK,, to read it you have to register (free).  But the ultra-short synopsis: there's a lot of we don;t know, and some of what we do know (radiation, perchlorates, etc.) isn't encouraging.  However, with a species as clever and adaptable as ourselves, there is always a "what if."  It turns out that turning Martian regolith into usable soil for plants isn't as simple as it looked in The Martian, but it's not impossible, either. On to Mars!

Can we farm this? Maybe we can. (image NASA)