Cotton seedlings are growing in a habitat on the moon.

There's a miniature garden growing on the far side of the moon.

The China National Space Agency's Chang'e 4 lander is exploring the mysterious side of the moon that faces away from Earth. It also has some unusual guests on board and -- in a first for the moon -- some of them are sprouting.

A team from Chongqing University in China developed a sealed biosphere habitat stocked with seeds, fruit fly eggs and yeast that it hoped would create a mini-ecosystem. So far, the cotton seeds are the only ones to sprout. The experiment also contains potato and oilseed rape seeds.

China's state-run Xinhua News announced the sprouts Tuesday and posted a series of progress images covering the course of nine days and showing the seedlings reaching up inside their habitat. Chang'e 4 touched down in early January.

Seedlings in space! First-ever cotton plant on the Moon growing in #ChangE4 mini biosphere https://t.co/L8YpXqoVIG pic.twitter.com/3NVoCBUn5M

The seeds, flies and yeast were selected for their ability to withstand low gravity, strong radiation and wide temperature swings on the moon. 

The Chang'e 4 lander is the first to visit the far side of our lunar neighbor, sometimes called "the dark side of the moon." It successfully deployed the Jade Rabbit 2 rover and has now once again made history by sprouting the first seedlings on the moon.

The ability to grow food on the moon would be important if humanity ever attempts to make good on the sci-fi dream of building a crewed lunar base. We could probably make some nice sweaters from moon-grown cotton.

The space agency is already looking ahead to its next lunar mission, Chang'e 5, which is designed to collect lunar samples and bring them back to Earth. It's also exploring options for a crewed moon mission.

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