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Can food be grown on Mars?

food mars
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Can food be grown on Mars?

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10

Branson Eckel Mountainside Middle School 6th grade ANSWER: Great question, Branson. The answer is, not without a lot of help. One thing that plants need to grow on earth is something called free nitrogen. This exists on Earth, and we commonly add more to the soil in the form of fertilizer to help plants grow. There isn’t any free nitrogen in the soil on Mars, so we’d need to bring a LOT of fertilizer to help the plants grow. Another problem is that liquid water can’t exist at the surface of Mars because it is so cold, and the atmosphere is so thin. We’d need to bring a greenhouse-like enclosure where liquid water would be stable to grow the plants in. Finally, sunlight on Mars is weaker than it is on Earth. We’d need to bring sun lamps so that plants would have enough energy to photosynthesize.

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