It's Monday, May 16th, 2022. I'm Jackson Bird today. Plants have successfully been grown in

moon dust for the first time. Plus, McDonald's is officially closing all of their restaurants in Russia. Why that is such a big deal.

A new site that will tell you how much your current home or one you're looking to buy is at risk

of wildfires and underwear that can protect you from STIs. Here's some cool stuff for your ride home.

We may not have been to the moon for 50 years, but even today, new experiments are being conducted on materials collected and brought back from the Apollo missions.

If anything, the experiments are ramping up as we prepare to make our return to the moon and beyond very soon.

Now, as I've mentioned numerous times, growing plants in space is not just great research

for how various species of plants can survive in extreme conditions and thereby inform some

ways that we might help them survive our changing climate, but will also prove to be crucial

for longer missions in space. With

limited payload, the more we can create en route or at the destination, and therefore the

less that has to be packed, the better. But even if a crew plans on growing a decent proportion

of the food they'll be eating, you still have to pack the supplies for growing the food. And as any gardener

can tell you, the weight of soil adds up very quickly. And the amount of soil required to grow

plants always seems to be more than you would expect. Probably something engineers at NASA

are better at estimating than I am, but nonetheless. Hydroponics, that is growing plants

without soil using water-based nutrient solutions,

is a great alternative, and one that NASA has explored a lot. But for that, you still need a lot of

water, and especially on these longer missions, water is also in short supply, at least for now,

as we continue perfecting various experiments like turning astronauts urine into potable water. A real thing.

But anyways, given the many different challenges to growing plants and the great necessity of doing

so, a team of researchers from the University of Florida recently conducted an experiment to

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