Update on Chang’e-4 plant experiments
Link here. It appears the plant experiment has now run its course, designed as it was to end before the arrival of the first lunar night.
The experiment’s chief designer, Xie Gengxin of Chongqing University, told Xinhua that life inside the canister would not survive the lander’s first lunar night, which started on Sunday. The moon’s nighttime period lasts for about two Earth weeks.
It also appears that though the plant experiment included potato, cotton, and oilseed rape, only the cotton seeds spouted. China has only released a limited amount of information about this research, so to get further details we will likely have to wait for the published papers.
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Link here. It appears the plant experiment has now run its course, designed as it was to end before the arrival of the first lunar night.
The experiment’s chief designer, Xie Gengxin of Chongqing University, told Xinhua that life inside the canister would not survive the lander’s first lunar night, which started on Sunday. The moon’s nighttime period lasts for about two Earth weeks.
It also appears that though the plant experiment included potato, cotton, and oilseed rape, only the cotton seeds spouted. China has only released a limited amount of information about this research, so to get further details we will likely have to wait for the published papers.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
S couple of typos in there Mr Zimmerman.
Seed sprouting is relatively trivial compared to normal growth for plants subjected to low gravity conditions. Sprouting depends on moisture and temperature for seeds biochemically ready to start growing. Gravity is the factor that orients the direction roots and stems point. I wondered how the specimens would be kept alive during the long lunar night. Now we know this experiment was the tiniest of baby steps.
Andrew_W: Fixed. Thank you!
As per The Martian does this mean China has colonized the moon?
Watney’s “In your face, Neil Armstrong” moment said that once you grow crops, you are a colonist. Unfortunately for China, these are not crops, just test plants. Otherwise we would have already colonized low Earth orbit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeNn86dAOM0 (1/4 minute)
Come to think of it, I recall that some astronauts on the ISS ate lettuce that they grew. Crops? ISS as colony?
One day we will colonize Mars