Plant growth experiment(s) on the Moon: from the success of Chang'e 4 to future Lunar farming

In 2019, China's Chang 'e-4 mission carried out the first biological experiment on the moon, carrying six kinds of organisms, including potatoes, cotton, rape, Arabidopsis, fruit flies and yeast, to form a miniature ecosystem and cultivate two green leaves, which were evaluated by Nature and Science as the first green leaves on the human moon. Its background, creative sources, development basis and influence will be comprehensively introduced.

Numerous studies have suggested that caves are widespread on the Moon, Mars, and even across the solar system. As compared to the ground, building bases in caves on these extraterrestrial bodies have notable advantages. For this purpose, our team investigated dozens of caves with different types in Chongqing. Karst landforms are widely developed and complete in Chongqing, including skylights, ground seams, dark rivers, shafts, and other special landforms. Most of these caves are arched structures (like lava tubes) with a radius of a few meters to several tens of meters and a length of several thousand meters, or tens of thousands of meters (enough for simulation (meeting simulation needs). Caves stretch in a winding manner, with complex crisscross structures and isolated darkness inside. And we attempted to build an integrated simulation karst cave farm in Chongqing, China.