Mars Habitat & Analog

Objective

Design an analog for a Mars habitat which accommodates a crew of 4 for long-duration missions (months to years), to be constructed in Iceland, to meet the needs of Iceland Space Agency. The habitat should closely represent a Martian habitat with as few differences as possible, given that it will be used here on Earth for terrestrial analog studies.

This project was a part of a 15-person group project in RISD’s Design for Extreme Environments class, funded through the Rhode Island Space Grant. Unless otherwise specified in captions, all work shown is my own or work I contributed to in a substantive manner.

Most of my work was within a subteam focused on the design of the crew quarters module.

  • My teammates on this project are listed here:

    Crew Quarters Team: Alex Liu, Rumei Zha, Vincent Zhang, Waverly Huang

    Other teammates: Aditri Arun, Anthony Chen, Isabel Obolensky, Kaeli Li, Moran Zheng, Olivia Petrarcha, Rick Fan, Sam Zhan

  • Description text goes here

  • Description text goes here

Crew Quarters

Render by Rick Fan

  • Soundproof walls minimize sleep disruption and provide privacy

  • 4 private rooms with the same or mirrored layouts (62.7 ft2 each)

  • Bathrooms are shared by only two astronauts each for privacy and a sense of ownership of the space

Lighting cycles to reinforce astronauts’ circadian rhythms while living in an enclosed space

Astronauts can use lighting to customize their living space

Control the lighting scheme and window screen from the bed

Process

Mission Architecture

As a guiding principle, we set out to design the habitat first and then adapt the analog from Martian constraints to construction in Iceland.

The analog is a concept to be built on Iceland’s volcanic ash fields as a simulant for the Martian environment. Our design is focusing on the second stage of a habitat that would be added to over successive missions.

The habitat uses a combination of 8-meter-wide rigid modules and inflatable passageway modules to connect them. It assumes a SpaceX Starship or comparable launch vehicle, with two payloads devoted to each mission’s habitat or expansion.

The project does not propose a solution

Lighting cycles to reinforce astronauts’ circadian rythyms in

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