The long journey of agriculture…continues on Mars

Do you remember the sci-fi blockbuster “The Martian” with Matt Damon? In the film, Mark Watney is an astronaut who remains on Mars after his fellow expedition members have to flee the planet due to a space storm. Mark must find a way to stay alive while waiting for a possible rescue. So, like a new Robinson Crusoe, he uses all his scientific and technological knowledge, but above all his initiative, all his creativity and all his imagination to make food, water and energy reserves last as long as possible. Above all, he dedicates himself to an extraordinary undertaking: growing potatoes on Mars! Hollywood science fiction? Or is it really true that in the near future, astronauts will rely on the fruits of lunar or Martian soil for their survival on distant worlds?

Stefania De Pascale , agronomist and absolute pioneer at an international level in the field of space agriculture, would have few doubts if she had to answer these questions directly, as her recent Piantare patate su Marte (Aboca, 2024, pp. 168) testifies. In fact, the book shows how growing potatoes on the “Red Planet” is still science fiction, but not that much. Above all, Stefania De Pascale warns us: to travel in space we will have to rely on extraterrestrial agriculture . And for decades astronautics experts have been preparing for this eventuality that has become not so remote in recent years.

We are, in fact, about to embark on a new space race, with scientific and romantic goals at the same time, such as the return of man to the Moon and the first trip to Mars, and some questions become pressing: how can we sustain ourselves in the hostile environment of space? Nourish ourselves, quench our thirst, keep ourselves healthy on a physical and mental level?

One thing is clear in De Pascale's book: traveling and living outside the Earth's atmosphere for long periods - months, years - will not be sustainable if colonists and space travelers have to rely on supplies from Earth . This type of transportation has enormous costs and allows the few astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) to be kept in orbit. To build a fixed lunar base or settle on Mars, the path must be that of self-sufficiency, a self-sufficiency that, according to experts like De Pascale, only agriculture can provide.

If you think about it, it's not that strange. Our life depends on the plant kingdom, to which we are linked by a symbiotic relationship, even if we often ignore it. Plants colonized the planet long before us, they are the green lungs of the Earth, they remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and produce oxygen, they play a very important role in the water cycle and, through symbiosis with some bacteria, they are able to fix nitrogen making it available for living beings. The Earth is called the Green Planet precisely because it is covered with plants unlike other planets in the solar system such as Mars, the Red Planet, where no form of life has yet been identified. But if man really wants to overcome the terrestrial limits and try to live "out there", he will have to find some stratagems to recreate the living conditions necessary for survival .

The possibility of carrying out extended space missions is linked to the ability to create a bioregenerative system to support life and, among all the organisms studied for this function, plants represent the most promising regenerators to date. This is where space agriculture comes into play, the practice of growing plants to support life in an extraterrestrial environment. A practice that offers us many surprises, opportunities, paths to follow starting from what for Stefania De Pascale is more than a certainty: the journeys of the future, a not so distant future, will be made by astronaut-farmers.