I'll paste in my previous comment about this. The tone is bit harsh, the context was more hypeful<p>> Ugh. I feel like Wamelinks researchs importance is way overblown. Hydroponics has shown that you need no soil to grow plants, so is it really surprising that Mars soil simultant that has been specifically treated to be friendly can sustain plants and worms? Especially when the simultant might not have been very accurate chemically to begin with. Personally I think the first generations will be using heavily hydroponics, and during that period can do actual in-situ experiments that are far more informative than anything we can do here on earth.<p>> Direct quote from their 2014 paper (I couldn't find the earthworm paper, links would be appreciated):<p>> > Our results show that it is in principle possible to grow plants in Martian and Lunar soil simulants although there was only one plant that formed a flower butt on moon soil simulant. <i>Whether this extends to growing plants on Mars or the moon in full soils themselves remains an open question. More research is needed about the representativeness of the simulants</i>, water holding capacity and other physical characteristics of the soils, whether our results extend to growing plants in full soil, the availability of reactive nitrogen on Mars and moon combined with the addition of nutrients and creating a balanced nutrient availability, and the influence of gravity, light and other conditions.