Bioplastic habitats on Mars could be built from algae

Future plastic habitats on Mars could be created from locally cultivated algae, which could then host several algae-growing operations. The first step in such a circular system has been shown to work under Mars-like conditions during a laboratory, which can help future explorers establish habitats on the planet.

What would you bring to Mars for such an endeavor? Robin Wordsworth at Harvard University has a list: some algae, a small bio-reactor, a 3D printer and several flask-like containers made of bioplastically built with plant material. Wordsworth says he would cultivate algae in the containers, use the bio actor to convert the algae into more bioplastic, then 3D pressure more containers to grow more algae and so on.

“The concept is that you use a material to manufacture your habitat that can be built from the biology itself. You can create a self -supporting system,” he says. Wordsworth and his colleagues have now demonstrated the first part of this cycle.

They grew the green algae Dunaliella Tertioleta In containers made of 1 millimeter thick pieces of a bioplasty called PLA. To match martical conditions, they placed each container in a chamber where the press was approx. 0.6 percent of atmospheric press on Earth, and the air contained more than 98 per year. Hundred carbon dioxide. Over the course of 10 days, the researchers found that the algae were growing and photosynthesis for speeds comparable to several earth -like conditions.

The idea of ​​3D-printing bioplastic habitats is about a decade, but the new experience shows that these could really maintain life, says Amor Menezes at the University of Florida. “This is extremely exciting. A trip to Mars and a stay at Mars will be about a few years long, so we can’t take Everhything with us,” he says. “This shows that bioplasty can potentially support life under march-like conditions, and perhaps that many uses during a Martian stay could be bioplastic.”

The team’s success required several years of experimentation with various container design and bacterial strains, says team member Rafid Quayum, also at Harvard University. “Physicists, engineers, planetary scientists, we were all kinds together to put our brains together and find out how we can make ourselves out of the ground more habitable,” he says.

Now the team wants to introduce all extraterrestrial elements into their experience by testing fabric in a vacuum, to emulate planets or moons that have no atmosphere and to have them for spacecraft in low circuits surrounded the ground.

“We think this is a truly coherent basic research question. It is certainly important to give people beyond the earth in the future, but also just as a basic question, to understand the rage of ways you can support life,” says Wordsworth.