grow lettuce on Mars by the UAE

Starting with lettuce, strawberries, tomatoes and date palms, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Space Agency is set on becoming a leader in growing food on Mars. The UAE Mars probe isn’t lifting off until 2020 but the Middle Eastern country isn’t waiting to begin its space agriculture program, the BBC reports.

“When we get there, we’ll have to eat,” Rashid Al Zaabi, senior strategic planner at the UAE Space Agency, reportedly said, adding that an additional goal of the research is improving earthbound agriculture.

“There are similarities between Mars and the desert. The landscape of the UAE, the soil, are similar,” Al Zaabi told the BBC.
Lettuce, strawberries and tomatoes were selected because previous research has suggested that these plants may thrive on the Red Planet. The date palm was chosen “for its symbolic links with the region.”

Construction of the US$150-million desert research facility has already begun. Dubbed Mars Science City, the series of domes will cover two million square feet of desert. Once complete, scientists will live in the sealed city for a year, studying energy, food and water requirements.“It’s about creating a post-oil, knowledge-based, creative-based economy. So it is important we become a well-established scientific centre,” Omran Sharaf, project manager of the Mars Mission probe, told the BBC. “We have created many engineers, but not many scientists. This (Mars project) is a purely scientific mission.”