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Future Mars astronauts may chomp on Earth's tiniest flowering plant to survive

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The smallest flowering plant on Earth could have a huge role to play in humanity’s exploration of space. Watermeal, or Wolffia, is found floating on the surfaces of lakes and ponds in Asia, gathering in pinhead-sized clumps on our planet. When carried to space, watermeal could provide both food and oxygen for astronauts.


As humanity prepares for the next era of human-crewed space exploration, which will focus on longer missions and sojourns to the moon’s surface (and even Mars'), sustainability is key. That means a small sort of foodstuff that astronauts can carry with them and grow in all kinds of gravitational environments would be incredibly useful.


To see if watermeal fits the bill, scientists from Mahidol University in Thailand have been testing this rootless, flowering plant under conditions of hypergravity — up to 20 times that found at Earth’s surface — for weeks and months at a time. They do this by spinning the substance in an 8-meter-wide (26.2-foot-wide) centrifuge with four arms located at the European Space Agency (ESA) technical center in the Netherlands.


Watermeal presents itself as a viable choice to sustain astronauts due to the fact that it produces a lot of oxygen through photosynthesis, explaining the plant is also a good protein source.


During the testing, watermeal is placed in boxes fitted with LEDs that simulate natural sunlight and is left to grow at 20g (1g is equal to average Earth gravity at the surface of our planet). The Large Diameter Centrifuge (LDS) can spin containers of watermeal at up to 67 revolutions per second in six gondolas placed along its arms.


So far, we have seen little to no difference between plant growth at 1G and simulated microgravity, but we want to extend our observations to get an idea of how the plants react and adapt across the whole range of gravity environments.






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