Jellyplants on Mars

Scientists are creating a new breed of glowing plants - part mustard and part jellyfish - to help humans explore Mars.

The first colonists on Mars probably won't be humans. More likely, they'll be plants. And the prototypes of these leafy pioneers are under development right now.

As part of a proposed mission that could put plants on Mars as soon as 2007, University of Florida professor Rob Ferl is bioengineering tiny mustard plants. He's not altering these plants so that they can adapt more easily to Martian conditions. Instead, he's adding reporter genes: part plant, part glowing jellyfish - so that these diminutive explorers can send messages back to Earth about how they are faring on another planet.

The plants can be genetically wired to glow with a soft green aura when they encounter problems. Within a garden grouping, some plants could report (by glowing) low oxygen levels, while others might signal low water or, say, the wrong mix of nutrients in the soil.

"Just like humans, plants must learn how to adapt to any new environment," Ferl says. On Mars they would encounter extreme temperatures, low air pressure, exposure to harsh ultraviolet light, and generally inadequate soil. "We are using genetics to create plants that can give us data we can use to help them survive."

Learning to grow plants on Mars will be an important precursor to humans living there. Future explorers will need oxygen, food, and purified water - items too costly to ferry from Earth to Mars on a regular basis. But plants can help provide those essentials inexpensively and locally as part of a self-contained "bioregenerative" life support system.

Bioregenerative life support means humans, plants, and microbes working together in a renewable system. Humans consume oxygen and produce carbon dioxide. Plants take carbon dioxide and turn it back into breathable air. Human waste (after processing by suitable microbes in bioreactor tanks) can provide nutrients for growing plants, which will, in turn, produce food for people.

Such life support systems on Mars will probably involve growing crop plants in Martian soil within specially designed greenhouses, says Andrew Schuerger, a manager of Mars projects with Dynamac Corporation at the NASA's Kennedy Space Centre.