Ever since Google announced that they'd be going to the moon in 2015, NASA has been planning to hitch a ride with the tech giant. The space agency's goal is to stow a few hitchhiking plants aboard the eventual winner of Google's Lunar X Prize and then unload them upon the surface of the moon.
Once upon the lunar surface, these plants, encapsulated in their own little greenhouses, will test whether plants can grow upon the moon. So far NASA is planning on sending basil, turnips and some flowers to the lunar surface in the hopes that they will be capable of surviving the radiation that the moon's thin atmosphere experiences. As seedlings, plants can be just as susceptible to damage from radiation as we are, so you could say that the turnips and flowers will actually function in part as a human analogue.
If the plants thrive on the moon, this could be the very beginning of a lunar terraforming effort that could see gardens and flower beds popping up all over the lunar surface someday. As well as providing a source of food for future lunar colonists, these plants would quite literally bring something of home to those of us who might someday leave Earth for greener pastures.
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