http://time.com/5503056/first-plant-moon-china/ > The moon is an inhospitable place. In the sunlight, temperatures hit highs of 260 degrees Fahrenheit, in the dark, it can reach a miserable minus 280. Radiation is high and water is scarce. But according to the China National Space Administration, there is now life growing 240,000 miles from the Earth; cotton seeds carried on board the Chang’e-4 lunar lander have just sprouted, making them the first plants to ever germinate on another world. > “We have given consideration to future survival in space. Learning about these plants’ growth in a low-gravity environment would allow us to lay the foundation for our future establishment of space base,” Liu Hanlong, the scientist leading the experiment, told the South China Morning Post. The Chinese Communist Party’s official newspaper, The People’s Daily hailed the achievement as “humankind’s first biological experiment on the moon”.