Introduced Plants on Other Planets

[whiterafter]

I was wondering about survivability if a plant was introduced onto Mars. I don't mean a highly adapted bio-changed something or other, and I don't mean a tree, but could I plant a rose on Mars?

It would meet the requirements of carbon dioxide (definitely) and sunlight (for the most part) for plant growth, and if one could set up a watering device I think that might work?

I wonder if an Antarctic fern or some plant used to very cold climates might do well. Maybe it could survive the cold temperatures better and could utilize the water ice for its own sort of water like some plants found down there.

Of course I'm not considering magnetic radiation or soil types, but what do you think about this?

[Streetwind]

Rose bushes are too highly developed plants... they're too dependant on exactly the right environment. It would die within the hour, unless you happened to catch a martian summer noon a little north of the equator, where it can have temperatures above 0°C. In that environment, it probably can get enough CO2 even in the low-pressure environment to live if you gave it Earth soil. Without it? Unlikely, again, due to the highly developed nature of the rose.

But yes, lower order plants are a possibility. Mosses and lichen, for instance. The things that stubbornly grow against all odds in the poorest environments we have on Earth, those might grow in a similarly stubborn fashion if placed on Mars. Some form of irrigation would be required, as it's too dry otherwise. But it wouldn't need very much of it.

Seeding the planet with large amounts of such (potentially gene-manipulated) lower order plants is expected to be part of a hypothetical terraforming process. A later step, after you increase the temperature and atmospheric pressure. They woud be the way that oxygen is introduced.

[-Velocity-]

I am not a botonist or biologist, but right off the top of my head, I can say no with high confidence. For one, the atmospheric pressure is far too low, and only in extremely low elevations on Mars can liquid water exist- and only then in a very narrow temperature range. The plant will dry out and die quickly. You could mix in antifreezes I suppose and extend that range, but I doubt the plant can live off of them.

Also, the ultraviolet light and surface radiation environment would probably kill it.

What other things might kill it? I'm not sure. The Martian soil is probably toxic for it too.

Underground, things might be different, I wouldn't be surprised if there are some Earth microbes that could survive there, especially if the recurring slope lineae we see coming down some crater walls are in fact flowing water streaks bubbling up from underground. But plants? Plants need sunlight.

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Anyway, supposedly, if we could melt the ice caps, composed of carbon dioxide, we could increase the surface pressure to like 0.3 bar. But I donno how plants would take that. That's a VERY high partial pressure of CO2, for all I know, they could get CO2 poisoning- sorta like drowning them in water. I'm not a biologist/botonist, as I said, maybe I should keep my mouth shut

Few a few thousand dollars you could get a vacuum pump, a pressure vessel, and a CO2 tank and find out for yourself. It could be fun. You could even get some UV lamps to simulate the lack of any kind of ozone.

Maybe set it in your garage beside your operating Farsworth fusor fusing deuterium to help simulate the high radiation environment

The good news is that plants are not susceptible to cancer death because they don't have vital organs and high cellular mobility to allow cancer to spread... but radiation can still kill them.

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Oh yea, and the overnight low is gonna kill your plants too. It is not uncommon for the daytime high and nighttime low to be more than 100 degrees C in difference. There is very little atmosphere, so the temperature drops like a rock when the Sun goes down.

Edited February 20, 2015 by |Velocity|

[Frida Space]

If you mean growing plants in dedicated habitats (with Earth-like temperature, air, pressure etc.) on the surfaces of other planets, then that's going to be fascinating. That's what the Lunar Plant Growth Habitat will try to find out in the next years. NASA will go on the Moon to grow Arabidopsis seeds for 10 days (enough to see germination and initial growth), monitoring them with a GoPro. Most scientists think that the lunar conditions (gravity and space radiation) should be favorable for plant growth, but we'll have to find out.

[lajoswinkler]

Absolutely not. Martian environment is for most intents and purposes vacuum. Pressure is so low water can't exist as a liquid. Partial pressure of CO2 is below any tolerance for any photosynthetic organism on Earth.

[Tommygun]

The closest you'll come to a plant would be a lichen type fungi and they have done some growth test in the Mars Simulation Laboratory.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lichen#Response_to_environmental_stress

Edited February 22, 2015 by Tommygun