Unless you live in a futuristic igloo, it’s unlikely that your home resembles a new potential habitat designed for living and working on Mars.
In your home on Earth, you probably don’t have water insulation in your walls to shield you from radiation. There’s probably not a layer of carbon dioxide gas for temperature management, either. If you’re living on Mars though, these elements could be essential to your habitat.
In the future when humans live and work on other planetary bodies, our habitats will need to protect us from the new risks of these environments. For the red planet, a new habitat concept makes use of water ice that is abundant just under the surface of Mars in many areas.
Shaped like an inner tube, the “Mars Ice Home” inflates and has a shell of water ice surrounding it. It’s lightweight, can be transported and deployed with simple robotics, and can be filled with water before the arrival of a crew.
A group that came together in the Engineering Design Studio at NASA’s Langley Research Center began with a concept called “Mars Ice Dome.” Made up of NASA experts, designers and architects from both industry and academia, the group’s project was chosen by NASA through the Space Technology Mission Directorate’s (STMD) Center Innovation Fund which encourages creativity and innovation.
The Ice Home concept came out of the group’s design session. Assisting the group was a team from Space Exploration Architecture and the Clouds Architecture Office that won first place in NASA’s Centennial Challenge for a 3-D printed habitat called Mars Ice House.
There are many options for sustainable habitats and the Ice Home concept is just one of them, but its unique method of shielding against radiation has a potential double benefit. The water ice stored in the shell that surrounds the inflatable torus could be converted into rocket fuel for the Mars Ascent Vehicle, which also makes the structure a refillable storage tank.
Constraining the team was how much water could be extracted, and experts suggest the rate at which the habitat could be filled with water is one cubic meter per day. The Ice Home would be completely filled in 400 days.
All materials incorporated in this concept are translucent, allowing for outside light enter the habitat. In addition to their translucency, materials will have to endure multiple years in the tough Mars environment.
The design also contains an area for crews to work on robotic equipment inside the habitat without needing pressure suits. Between the crew’s living space and the layer of ice shielding, an insulation layer to manage temperatures would consist of carbon dioxide gas, readily available on Mars.
Rather than creating a human habitat underneath the surface of Mars to shield against space radiation, the Ice Home concept eliminates the need for heavy robotic equipment that would be required for a subsurface habitat and sent from Earth.
With exciting habitats like the Ice Home addressing the challenges of Mars’ hostile environment, the future of humans living and working in deep space is closer than ever before.
For more about the Journey to Mars, visit NASA.gov.