The Paragon Space Development Corporation has developed a device that will allow the cultivation of flowers and vegetables on the Moon . It is the Lunar Oasis , a cylindrical greenhouse embedded in an aluminum support that is responsible for providing the plant with the carbon dioxide it needs and extracting the excess oxygen that accumulates through photosynthesis.
The challenge of this kind of "vegetable spacesuit" , as described by Taber MacCallum, co-founder of Paragon, is to get plants to grow on the surface of our satellite, with a force of gravity six times less than on Earth . In previous tests on the International Space Station, plants had been able to flourish, but there is still no experience with plants outside the upper layer of the Earth's atmosphere, where cosmic rays are not filtered and could impede growth.
The tests of the Lunar Oasis will be carried out from 2012 , when it will be launched into space by Odyssey Moon Ltd. , a private company that aspires to launch a robotic capsule to the Moon. When it takes off, the miniature greenhouse will carry grains of Brassica , a plant from the Brussels sprout family capable of germinating and flowering in just 14 days, so the success or failure of the experiment will be seen quickly.
