Cyanobacterial Growth Optimized for Mars Promises Lifeline to Crewed Missions
Crewed mission to Mars
February 19, 2021
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In keeping with humanity’s quest to explore new worlds and boldly go where no one has gone before, leading space agencies are gearing up to send crewed missions to Mars. One of the many challenges of this mission is the production of food and other life-support consumables on site without having to import them from Earth.
In a new study, scientists at the Center of Applied Space Technology and Microgravity (ZARM), at the University of Bremen, in Germany, showed that it is possible to grow Anabaena cyanobacteria under conditions that are a compromise between conditions on the Martian surface and optimal conditions for cyanobacterial productivity.
New Method for Growing Cyanobacteria in Mars-Like Conditions
Scientists show for the first time that Anabaena cyanobacteria can be grown with only local gases, water, and other nutrients and at low pressure
February 17, 2021
NASA, in collaboration with other leading space agencies, aims to send its first human missions to Mars in the early 2030s, while companies like SpaceX may do so even earlier. Astronauts on Mars will need oxygen, water, food, and other consumables. These will need to be sourced from Mars, because importing them from Earth would be impractical in the long term. In
Frontiers in Microbiology, scientists show for the first time that Anabaena cyanobacteria can be grown with only local gases, water, and other nutrients and at low pressure. This makes it much easier to develop sustainable biological life support systems.