A new experiment shows that combining human wastewater with lunar and Martian regolith could provide the nutrients needed to grow crops there.
“Organic waste could be the key to producing healthy, productive soils on outposts on the Moon or Mars,” said study leader Harrison Coker of Texas A&M University. statement. “By weathering the simulated soil, month and Mars It has become clear that many essential plant nutrients can be extracted from surface minerals by harnessing organic waste streams. ”
If humans are to build permanent bases on the Moon or Mars, they will have to learn the following: live off the land — Especially on Mars, earth It’s too nice and too expensive to rely on for regular supplies, including fertilizer, from home.
Unfortunately, the soil on the Moon and Mars is currently not suitable for growing crops. Scientists call this soil “regolith” rather than soil. This is because regolith is an inorganic substance, and although regolith contains nutrients within its minerals, those nutrients are locked up and currently almost inaccessible to life.
So researchers have been looking for ways to make these nutrients available and turn dead regolith into something more like organic soil.
So far, scientists have taken a variety of approaches to this problem, including heat treatment, hydroponics, liquid salts (known as ionic liquids), and electrodeoxygenation, which are used on Earth to break down pollutants in wastewater. However, although these methods have had varying levels of success, they have common drawbacks. Additional chemicals, energy and technology must be imported and constantly replenished with fresh nutrients, making it an expensive process.
So Coker and his team looked for other ways to use on-site resource utilization to create soil for crops. In other words, everything already exists on the Moon or Mars, and there is no need to import process components from Earth beyond the initial technology.
The components are simply regolith and human waste produced by astronauts. Coker and Julie Howe, also of Texas A&M, collaborated with NASA scientists. kennedy space center In Florida, researchers are implementing a prototype bioregenerative life support system (BLiSS) called the Organic Processing Assembly (OPA).
OPA is a series of bioreactors and filters. Sewage enters at one end, passes through the system, and exits at the other end as nutrient-rich wastewater that has been filtered of toxins.
The experiment used simulated sewage and simulated regolith, one representing the Moon and the other representing Mars. There is actually no real Martian regolith on Earth, and the samples of lunar regolith we have are rare and valuable, so we have to use imitations.
Coker’s team combined the effluent produced by OPA with the simulated regolith, placing the two different solutions in a shaker for 24 hours, which acted to “weather” the regolith particles.
They found that these mixtures caused the lunar regolith simulant to desorb (or release) large amounts of sulfur, as well as calcium and magnesium. Mars simulants also produced these as well as sodium. These nutrients are made available to plants, which eat them and grow.
Furthermore, through the microscope, it was found that the particles of the simulant had weathered inside the shaker. The lunar simulant had small holes, while the Martian simulant was covered with nanoparticles. This type of weathering is an important step toward becoming a more earth-like material.
Of course, plants require a greater variety of nutrients than were desorbed in this experiment. Iron, zinc, and copper are just some of the necessary nutrients that are lacking.
Moreover, BLiSS technology is not yet completely efficient and the imitations used are only close to the real thing. Real lunar and Martian regolith may react differently. Therefore, further experiments along these directions are needed.
But research is already piling up, and this new finding is just the latest in a series exploring how the resources of the moon and Mars can be harnessed to help astronauts make a living.
For example, in January 2025, researchers found that: Improves crop growth Not of the Martian variety, but with fertilized lunar regolith. The experiment used Milorganite, a brand of fertilizer made from heat-treated microorganisms that digest wastewater. Mars’ regolith didn’t perform well in tests because it can be very dense and clay-like, which can prevent oxygen from reaching plant roots.
Also included in the Martian regolith perchlorateis a strong oxidizing agent. Research by researchers Indian Space Research Organization how two bacteria Sporosarcina pasturi and black ococcidiopsisproduces a binding agent from waste products that, when combined with guar gum, could potentially hold particles of Martian regolith together to form a kind of brick-like material that could be used to build habitats. However, the toxicity of perchlorate required the researchers to: find stronger stocks Resists the oxidative effects of bacteria.
The same researchers also demonstrated the following method: Sporosarcina pasturi You can also create a brick-like material on the moon using a similar method. However, they showed that sintering the regolith mixture in a furnace produced bricks that were stronger than the bacteria. However, such bricks are prone to cracking under lunar conditions. So their solution was to use Sporosarcina pasturi– Brick-derived material as a sealant for filling cracks in sintered moon bricks.
If we lived on the Moon or Mars, it would give a whole new meaning to the concept of living on land, and the hope is that our extraterrestrial outposts would eventually become as self-sufficient as possible.
Coker’s team’s findings were published in the journal Jan. 7. ACS Chemistry of Earth and Space.