The first colonists on Mars will be in harsh conditions. They will have to give up many familiar amenities. However, there is a chance that in the vast Red Planet they will have the opportunity to enjoy a glass of wine.
Georgia is a country with 8,000 years of grape growing tradition. Now it focuses on leading scientists and winemakers to find ways to grow grapes on Mars! The project IX Millennium will serve as a tribute to the ninth millennium of Georgian winemakers and includes several phases of research to create an agricultural structure on Mars.
Now it is important to find terrestrial varieties of grapes that best resist Martian radiation, powerful dust storms and sharp temperature fluctuations. If everything goes according to plan, the base will be ready by 2024, when Ilon Musk intends to launch the first crew mission.
First Wine on Mars
The Georgian News Agency reports that the new space wine project will begin at the end of 2019 with the installation of “vertical greenhouses” inside a hotel in Tbilisi. The pods will be grown under hydroponic illumination with minimal human intervention to mimic possible conditions on Mars.
Georgian wine experts are working diligently, trying to understand which grape varieties will best adapt to the harsh conditions of the Red Planet. Over the next few years, researchers plan to model the Martian environment in the laboratory, exposing soil samples to conditions, high levels of carbon monoxide, and thin air. Experiments are not expected to bear fruit until 2022. Now there is only speculation that the best option would be white wine, since these varieties are more resistant to disease. Such experiments can provide future colonists with vines. It will be more difficult with fermentation and bottling, because nothing knows exactly how it will happen on Mars. But NASA believes that this is possible.
Recall that this is not the first attempt to do agriculture on Mars. Astronauts on the International Space Station have already successfully grown lettuce cultures in microgravity, and the Chiang-4 probe presented the first cotton shoots on the moon.
The producers of Budweiser launched barley seeds into space three times, trying to become the first brewers on Mars. The same experiments aboard the ISS were carried out by the makers of Ardmore Scotch whiskey in 2011-2014.
