Towards cyanobacterial-based life support systems on Mars
Cyprien Verseux, Mickaël Baqué, ASI sponsor.
Nov - 2014

journal : Italian Journal of Aerospace Medicine

Volume : 2014 ; Issue : 11
type: Article Journal

Abstract
Sending humans to Mars in the coming decades is the realistic goal of several public and private space actors. In order to allow the establishment of sustainable and expandable human outposts there by alleviating the need for sending from Earth consumables needed to sustain crews, a long-term goal of our team is to develop Mars-specific, autonomous (Earth-independent) Biological Life Support Systems (BLSS). Our approach is based on linking on-site resources to BLSS, by using selected cyanobacteria for processing resources found on Mars’s surface into a substrate suitable for feeding organisms used in BLSS. The project presented here represents one of the steps we are taking in this direction.

keywords : Life support system, Mars, Cyanobacterial