The moon is almost 400 000 km from earth and by 2026 – five decades from humankind’s last landing, astronauts are set to make the journey back during NASA’s Artemis 3 mission. This time to cultivate lunar-grown plants.

A duck weed collected from Adelaide’s River Torrens, is anticipated to amongst the first plants germinated by humans on the moon’s surface and returned to earth for analysis.

The project, Lunar Effects on Agricultural Flora – LEAF, is led by Space Lab Technologies, and includes a team of scientists from across the world.

Image: Peasy-AI-CC-BY-ND-4.0-DEED

Produced By: Emma Wotzke

Featured In Story: Jenny Mortimer – Associate Professor of Plant Synthetic and Biology at Adelaide University , and

First aired on The Wire, Thursday 4th April 2024