Growing Food on Mars | MARS: How to Survive on Mars

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Another thing that we're going to need when we go to Mars is food. Probably that's going to mean growing some of your own food. We want to do that not by lugging everything from Earth but by using what's already on Mars.

That includes using the regolith, or the dirt essentially. Now we know the soil, at least the topsoil on Mars, can be very toxic, especially in your the surface. Everything is desiccated; it's just all dried out.

But underneath that, we see the soil is very different. It's got carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus. So you'll probably be bringing that type of soil into an area where you then can create some sort of greenhouse. We will start to grow some food in hydroponic chambers, probably underground, probably using LED lights.

Because we have to remember on Mars, you can't just go outside, you know, and throw some seeds in the regolith. They're looking at taking microbes to make meat. It's synthetic biology is what it's called.

But we're learning how to make vegetables, how to make meat, how to make food to sustain the human body. The most efficient way to generate food to feed people is with an algae farm. If you have a big pool of water, you can grow algae in it, and certain strains of algae have all the nutrients that humans need.

Eventually, however, you're going to have to terraform Mars itself so that you can grow food on the surface of Mars.