Space obsessed people can now buy fake Mars dirt for only $20

It’s very clear that we aren’t going to Mars anytime soon but in order to compensate that, scientists have decided to make their own Mars dirt and they are even selling it.

Astrophysicists from the University of Central Florida have created the red soil that they call as ‘Mars simulant’. The replica of Mars dirt can provide researchers with important information regarding the soil.

The soil is designed to provide researchers with approximation of the actual Mars soil. This can prove to be useful for testing crop growth, or how exploration equipment might fare on the surface, reported Mashable.

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“The simulant is useful for research as we look to go to Mars. If we are going to go, we’ll need food, water and other essentials. As we are developing solutions, we need a way to test how these ideas will fare,” as per one of the researchers, Dan Britt.

The dirt replica is also being sold for $20 per kg, with an order already been placed by NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. According to study published in the journal Icarus, the artificial Martian soil is modeled upon the iron-rich volcanic ground that covers the Red Planet.

The soil can be produced in different types of varieties including sand, salty dirt and clay. The lab aims to use standardized methods for creating consistent stimulants so that people gearing up for space exploration can run experiments.

Moreover, apart from Mars’ soil, the lab also sells stimulants of moon and asteroid dirt. “I expect we will see significant learning happening from access to this material,” Britt said, as per Science Daily.