The Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS), situated in southern Utah, is the largest and longest-running Mars surface simulation facility in the world. Scientists from all over the world have been taking part into 2-week simulations at this base for the last 2 decades now. MDRS is located in an otherworldly landscape among red-banded hills and gullies that are nothing short of what one would expect Mars to look like. A two-story cylindrical building, the habitat (Hab), is where “marsonauts” live and work. Simulations take a crew of 6 people recruited among engineers, psychologists, doctors, geologists or biologists and experience what living on Mars for 2 weeks would look like. Each crew member has a specific role and planned experiments/studies they perform. In addition, a few EVAs (extra vehicular activities) happen daily where selected “marsonauts” of the crew get to fully suit up and perform experiments or simulations outside the Hab.
The development of space programs that aim for long-term missions are recently arising the question on how humans are going to sustain their nutritional needs. At the MDRS, I set up an experimental program to evaluate the ability of forward osmosis to purify wastewater produced during a manned mission to Mars and to use it to grow the edible cyanobacteria Spirulina, chosen for its high nutritious properties.
Habitat wastewater was filtered with membranes of forward osmosis technology. As a part of the Water Wall concept for future space habitats developed by NASA, these flexible and low mass membranes would be embedded into the walls of an inflatable structure that uses Forward Osmosis to recycle water.
This project envisions a system of flexible and low mass membranes embedded into the walls of an inflatable habitat structure used to recycle water to be reused by humans. At the same time, it allows the accumulation of solid wastes in the form of brines and hydrocarbons whose build up in exhausted bags would eventually provide a shielding layer against radiation encountered in space. Life support functions would therefore be fully integrated into the habitat architecture. This would allow the allocation of cheap bulk shielding materials even in space habitats in orbit, where no in situ resource materials are at hand.
The development of space programs that aim for long-term missions are recently arising the question on how humans are going to sustain their nutritional needs. At the MDRS, I set up an experimental program to evaluate the ability of forward osmosis to purify wastewater produced during a manned mission to Mars and to use it to grow the edible cyanobacteria Spirulina, chosen for its high nutritious properties.
Habitat wastewater was filtered with membranes of forward osmosis technology. As a part of the Water Wall concept for future space habitats developed by NASA, these flexible and low mass membranes would be embedded into the walls of an inflatable structure that uses Forward Osmosis to recycle water.
This project envisions a system of flexible and low mass membranes embedded into the walls of an inflatable habitat structure used to recycle water to be reused by humans. At the same time, it allows the accumulation of solid wastes in the form of brines and hydrocarbons whose build up in exhausted bags would eventually provide a shielding layer against radiation encountered in space. Life support functions would therefore be fully integrated into the habitat architecture. This would allow the allocation of cheap bulk shielding materials even in space habitats in orbit, where no in situ resource materials are at hand.