Now You Can Buy Fake Mars Dirt for $20/Kilogram. Obviously You'll Want to Know if Potatoes Can Grow in it

"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... You wouldn’t want to discover that your method didn’t work when we are actually there. What would you do then? It takes years to get there.”