Designing sustainable built environments for Mars habitation: Integrating innovations in architecture, systems, and human well-being

Abstract

Migration to Mars and building livable habitation gradually become prosperous and arduous roads for human progress. Although many technical breakthroughs have been achieved for supporting migration, sustainable survival on Mars needs further attention. The Mars habitation module serves as humans' first barrier from the harsh extraterrestrial conditions that people will spend almost 100% of time in the module. Thus, the indoor physical environment plays an important role in long-term and even permanent living on Mars. However, unlike developing a single technology, achieving a sustainable extraterrestrial residential environment is not simply a technical stacking but a comprehensive multidisciplinary issue that combines resources, energy, and human health. Therefore, this review gives a new angle of providing a developmental path from “habitation design to operation,” illustrating a systemic outlook of promising Mars habitation environment control technologies for the sustainability of both habitation resources and the occupant’s health. In this respect, relevant theories and technologies on Earth have made significant progress, which have great reference value for the development of Martian habitation. Regarding the two key points of Mars sustainable migration, namely the resources/energy and human health, a human-centered technical system of residential environment creation for outer space migration could further support future planetary exploration and migration.