Researchers successfully grow crops in Mars-simulated soil

Just like humanity to mimic art and similar to Matt Damon's character in The Martian, scientists have begun test-growing fruits and vegetables in soil that has the same composition of that found on the red planet.

Ecologist, Wieger Wamelink, of Wageningen University & Research Centre grew ten different crops in Mars-simulated soil, including tomato, rye, radish, pea, leek, spinach, garden rocket, cress, quinoa, and chive.

This, though the soil has much more arsenic, lead and mercury in it than the soil on earth.  They did not know what effect this would have on the food once it was grown.  The food continued to grow as fast as it does on Earth and, after much testing, the group was able to perfect the system so that some of the food had "no dangerous levels" of heavy metals.

“These remarkable results are very promising,” said Wamelink. “We can actually eat the radishes, peas, rye and tomatoes, and I am very curious what they will taste like.”

They did not test in the extremely high and low temperatures or with cosmic rays that bombard the planet's surface, because they assume most of the crops will be grown in a sealed environment.

As NASA plans a manned mission to Mars in the coming decades, we are getting extremely close to sustaining life on the planet.