EBIOS: toward closed-loop life support for space settlement

Artist rendering of EBIOS Experimental BIOregenerative Station. Credits: Interstellar Lab

Interstellar Lab has a mission to help build a future full of life on earth and beyond. To get started, the company plans modular villages on Earth designed as sealed facilities with environmental control and life support systems. EBIOS space-inspired communities will combine architecture, engineering, product design along with international collaboration in environmental science, agriculture, biochemistry, psychology and other disciplines. Each EBIOS will be a hospitality science center open to the public as well as scientists to facilitate awareness and needed research for self-sustaining space settlements. The company is developing methods and simulation software for integrated food production, water and waste systems to support human life in any environment.

Biotechnological strategies for a sustained human presence on Mars

A stepwise strategy for the application of biotechnology to address four key challenges of Martian settlement is presented in a Comment in Nature Biotechnology. As settlement progresses, a phased developmental approach is proposed starting on Earth with gradual migration of industry to Mars for the production of food, materials, therapeutics and waste reclamation toward an efficient closed-loop life support system.

Incremental integration of biotechnology into Mars mission designs – Credits: Shannon N. Nangle, et al. via Nature Biotechnology