Wheeling Middle School students Lillie Wheeler, left, Justin Parsons, Karri Burkle, and Johnathan Tingler design a cold environment for their moon planting experiment. (Photo Provided)

Wheeling Middle School students plan to know how to grow food to survive if they ever find themselves stranded on the moon.

Students in classes taught by Jenny Craig and Reiley Parker have embarked on the “Plant The Moon” mission project sent to them by NASA — find a way to grow vegetables in soil void of nutrients much like that you would find in a lunar environment.

Craig applied for and received $100 grants for four separate teams — $400 total — and from the West Virginia Space Grant Consortium to participate in the project. The teams are a mixture of students in grades 6-8 at the school.

They will join approximately 700 teams from across America, Canada, Mexico, Spain and New Zealand in gathering data that will assist NASA with its upcoming Artemis mission.

The nutrient-free “lunar soil” — an earth-made substance called regolith — has already been received by the school from NASA, Craig said. Students must wear masks, goggles and gloves when handling it.

“They think it’s cool,” Craig said. “They get to be like scientists.”

This week, students began designing the team patches for their space teams. Next week, they will design simulated space grow environments.

Team 1 will concentrate on measuring temperature and how it affects the plants, while Team 2 will concentrate on different watering techniques. One item purchased for them is an upside-down planter, according to Craig.

Team 3, meanwhile, will determine what nutrients should be added to the soil, and they already have selected a few to try, she continued. Among these are worm castings, fertilizer spikes, mushroom fertilizer and an earth soil mix.

Team 4 will study how plants perform under different types and amounts of light.

The experiment is helping students learn to create a hypothesis, record data and summarize results, according to Craig. And various other learning skills also are integrated in the project.

This week the students were to record a video explaining their project to NASA, which involved writing, public speaking and video editing production. They also will be doing a Google meet with other teams participating to compare their experiment and data.

“It’s really involved — more so than I thought when I signed up for the grant,” she said.

“It’s so cool to sit back and watch the students collaborate and get along. Social skills are a big part of this. They learn how to be a leader without being bossy.”

Craig credited Laurie Ferguson Ruberg of PLANTS LLC for being a facilitator of the challenge in West Virginia, and helping schools to apply for and receive grants to participate.