Coming To A Tesco Near You Soon: Martian Asparagus

Yes, apparently it's official - you could probably grow pretty good asparagus on Mars. See the article on Reuters here.

Phew.

I for one, am greatly relieved now that I know our asparagus stocks are safe well into the next century and beyond. If we can now just crack deploying a sustainable greenhouse on Mars, and of course a small branch of B & Q, we could move on to cucumbers and from there sort out all the worlds food problems.

A Martian War Machine, seen here wielding an asparagus-tip Doomsday device. The prophetic nature of H.G. Wells' writing continues to astonish even today.

Despite the deeply profound implications of discovering both water (in ice form) and alkaline soil - two key scientific finds which greatly increase the probability of indigenous lifeforms existing on our closest neighbouring planet; NASA decide to break the news gently through the use of fruit and veg metaphors.

Early test flights of the Beagle 2 probe gave no hint or indication as to the abject and dismal failure that was to come.

The decision by the NASA publicity department to let some veg-obsessed "wet chemist" (check his department name) to talk to anyone about this makes even the Beagle 2 team look like sophisticated urbanites.

Dr. Colin Pillinger, chief Mekon behind the Beagle 2 mission. Seen here with a giant George Forman grill, bought for him by his team last Chrimbo as a commiseration prize for crashing his brain-child into the Red Planet.