The Case for Biotech on Mars

Jacob Swett of Oxford Materials has collaborated with biotech engineers in Harvard, Yale, Boston and New York to produce this paper, published in Nature Biotechnology, which discusses the four main challenges for Martian settlement (food production, materials development, therapeutics and waste reclamation). 

In order to achieve the plans of various world-wide space agencies of sending crewed missions and creating an orbiting Martian space station during the first half of this century, one of the main challenges is to secure in situ resource utilisation (ISRU); this paper argues the case for bioproduction, including bioreclamation to deal with harmful or waste byproducts.