Project SpaceMoss

SpaceMoss is an interdisciplinary team of students, including biologists, physicists, and business students, who are working on bringing us one step closer to a human presence on Mars.

Specifically, SpaceMoss is working on a new breed of moss designed to survive on the red planet. Moss can be engineered to produce an almost limitless variety of compounds, and the implications are enormous. If we can get designed moss to grow on Mars, it could potentially provide pharmaceuticals for the first colonists, plastics for use in 3D printers on the first Mars outpost, or even long term terraforming of the entire planet.

But creating moss capable of surviving the harsh Martian conditions is no trivial task. One challenge for our moss, and the one we’ve decided to tackle first, is the violent temperature fluctuations on Mars. Therefore, our Green Lab is currently hard at work creating freeze-resistant moss, while our Red Lab is busy setting up experiments to simulate the conditions on the surface of Mars, in order to test the viability of our Moss.

Our webpage is still under construction, but you can already go Meet the Team, or read more about our project. More information, photos etc. will come as our work proceeds, so stay tuned, and make sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook for the latest news!