The Mycelium Cities of Mars9 Images
Something about mushrooms captures the human imagination. We ingest them as food and medicines, we spread them on our faces. We tap their psychoactive properties, seeking a good time or a spiritual awakening. In recent years, we’ve also fashioned bits of fungi – specifically, the underground, root-like structures mushrooms use to grow, AKA mycelia – into fabrics like mycelium leather, pioneered by the likes of Hermès. But some mushroom lovers set their sights even higher. Literally.
In June 2024, a team of researchers at NASA’s Ames Research Center secured a coveted funding contract to ‘grow’ homes out of fungi on the Moon and Mars. If all goes to plan, future space explorers will be able to take up residence in these off-world habitats, marking the next step in the space agency’s mission for humans to live and work beyond Earth. The futuristic fungi project is led by Lynn Rothschild, a senior research scientist at NASA Ames, with a background in evolutionary biology and astrobiology (AKA, hunting for aliens). Today, though, she works in the field of synthetic biology, creating new biological components to solve an array of problems in fields ranging from medicine to architecture. Or, in this case, ‘mycotecture’.
But what’s fungus got to do with it? To answer that, we need to take a step back. “The problem with space exploration is that it’s extremely expensive,” Lynn tells Dazed. “And the really expensive part is escaping Earth’s gravity well.” (In other words: to escape the gravitational pull of our home planet.) That’s why, if we watch a rocket launch, the bulk of the fuel is burned up in the first few moments, then the biggest parts of the rocket fall back to Earth, leaving a much smaller and lighter spacecraft to carry on toward the stars.
All this means that your payload – “what you’re actually sending to the Moon or Mars or anywhere else” – has to be as low mass as possible. Saving space is also a priority, as well as not using too much power (which is pretty important, when power is needed for critical functions like air or water recycling for onboard astronauts). And finally, “you really don’t want to take [up] any more astronaut time than you have to,” Lynn says. “They’ve got their own problems.”
A rubber ‘mould’ used to grow mycelium structuresCourtesy of NASA/Redhouse S
This leaves a lot of issues for the creators of future space habitats to contend with. You can’t carry a pile of bricks or metal to the Moon, for example, because that’s way too heavy and takes up too much space. Inflatables are a potential solution, explored by the likes of NASA and the European Space Agency (see: Hassell’s inflatable moon base) but it’s unclear how softer materials would hold up over a long time, as they’re peppered with micrometeorites and coated in Moon or Mars dust.
“If you want something that’s low mass, low volume, low power and low astronaut time, my immediate assumption [is that] life fits all of those things,” Lynn says. “If you start to think of life as a technology… it’s self-replicating, it doesn’t need us fiddling around with it.” Lynn experimented with the idea for several years, and over time, mycelium emerged as a perfect candidate for this life-based building material.
If you want something that’s low mass, low volume, low power and low astronaut time… you start to think of life as a technology – Lynn Rothschild
And what is mycelium, exactly? Essentially, it’s the part of a mushroom that never really sees the light of day. “So if you look at a mushroom, what you’re looking at is the fruiting body,” Lynn explains. But the main part of the organism is actually underground, formed of tiny hair-like structures that hold the soil together. These are mycelia, and they’ve evolved specifically to grow outward and bind things. “They will fill any shape that you give them,” she says. “They don’t care.”
Like all living things, of course, fungi need water and nutrients to grow, but there’s no liquid water on the surface of the Moon and Mars (as far as we know) and even less chance of finding a reliable source of nutrition. Luckily, astronauts would only need to carry a small amount of liquid nutrients to get the process started. Mycelia could then be shaped into bricks or – as part of a more ambitious plan – they could be grown to fill one of the aforementioned inflatable structures. At first, this might look more like some alien artefact designed by HR Giger, but then the mycelia would be left to “bake” in the hot temperatures of the lunar day cycle, turning clean, hard and durable in the process.
A mycelium Martian winnebagoCourtesy of Redhouse Architects
Already, the team behind NASA’s Mycotecture Off Planet Project have successfully experimented with binding the fungi to simulated versions of lunar and Martian regolith (bits of dust and broken rocks found on the surface of objects in outer space). This suggests that they could utilise materials that already exist in situ on the Moon and Mars, and even connect different components by growing a layer of mycelium between them – a process known as “biowelding”. Plus, the flexibility of the mycelium as it grows means it can conform to rough terrain or craters made by rogue space rocks, removing the need to build a flat foundation for your astronaut hab or research station.
By now, this might all be sounding like a futuristic fantasy, and ‘The Mushroom Cities of Mars’ does have a sci-fi ring to it. But each time a scientist finds a solution for the extreme environments of outer space, they tend to reveal some more down-to-Earth applications in the process. Already, people like Chris Maurer (founder of the Ohio architecture firm Redhouse, and a member of Lynn’s off-planet mycotecture team) have started putting these innovations into practice, via projects like BioHAB, which produces food and sustainable building materials from agricultural waste in Namibia.
How a mycelium Moon base might workCourtesy of Redhouse Architecture
MycoWorks is a biotechnology company that also works with mycelium to engineer materials for real-world clothing, design, and architecture, taking inspiration from the beauty of mushrooms themselves. While lots of research and fabrication goes on behind the scenes, it’s creative director Xavier (or Xevi) Gallego’s job to communicate the benefits of these materials to the wider world. “A few years ago, only mycologists and a few biologists were into mycelium,” he says over a video call from Paris, where MycoWorks recently presented an exhibition with Paragone at Design Miami. “How many times can you truly introduce a new material to the world? It’s very rare.”
With this mission in mind, the Design Miami exhibition, Mycelium Muse, gave seven artists and designers carte blanche to craft lamps, furniture, and works of art out of the high-tech material, highlighting its tactility and organic character. “When you feel it,” says Xevi, “you have the feedback of nature… It reminds you of something very close to you.”
MycoWorks x Paragone, Mycelium Muse: Discover ReishiCourtesy of MycoWorks and Paragone
Lynn echoes this sentiment, explaining that some of the earliest applications for mycelium in space could look more like interior design than hard science. For example, fungal structures could be used to create wall panels on Starlab, a next-gen space station scheduled to launch around 2028. These would have lots of useful qualities, she explains, from muffling the sounds of spaceflight, to very low flammability. (“Obviously, you don’t want a fire in a space station.”) But they also have psychological properties as well, especially when the alternative is staring at the steel wall of a utilitarian spacecraft for a mission that might last months on end.
Things have to start on a small scale, with things like wall panels in astronaut living quarters, because of the massive risks that off-planet architects face. “If you’re in the lab and [something] doesn’t work, who cares? You do it again the next day,” says Lynn. “But if you’re sending something to the Moon or Mars, particularly if you’re worried about astronauts, you’d better be pretty darn sure that [it’s] going to work to the best of your knowledge.” There are also extraterrestrial ecosystems to think about. From an astrobiologist’s point of view, she adds, it would be the greatest biological catastrophe in human history if we destroyed a living organism on Mars without even realising it.
If you’re sending something to the Moon or Mars, particularly if you’re worried about astronauts, you’d better be pretty darn sure that [it’s] going to work – Lynn Rothschild
Ultimately though, Lynn does have her heart set on seeing mycelium structures growing on the Moon. She even envisions creating more complex, circular ecosystems, where algae produces oxygen for the fungi to feed on, and the fungus itself performs additional functions like waste recycling or filtering toxic metals out of melted Martian ice.
Back on Earth, could we see a similar uptick in fungal architecture? Could we grow the skyscrapers of the future out of mycelium? Could it someday replace the concrete that devastates Earth’s ecosystems, or the plastic that pollutes our bloodstreams? “We’re very close to a world where you own things made of mycelium, and that’s normal,” Xevi suggests. That isn’t to say that we’re going to construct a lunar metropolis out of mushroom by-products anytime soon. “But we’re moving in the right direction.”