NASA is experimenting with mycelium bricks to grow houses

Scientists at NASA's Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley are experimenting with using fungal mycelium to help support life on the Moon and Mars, and last week NASA unveiled a concept for a mycelium-based “Mycotectural Architecture.”

Mycelium is essentially mold, the underground threads that make up the main part of fungi. It can be found in mushrooms, bread, beer, potatoes, synthetic leather, and even blue cheese for French cuisine lovers. But in the near future, mycelium may be used to make bricks that can withstand the harsh conditions of Mars, or to build homes for astronauts.

Scientists say mycelium is an excellent building material for a number of reasons, including its light weight, biodegradability, thermal insulation, and fire resistance. And most importantly, mycelium can be incorporated into larger, more complex structures, like buildings. This is where cyanobacteria come in. These bacteria use the sun's energy to convert water and carbon dioxide into oxygen and mycelium, which becomes the building blocks that we need.

Researchers from Stanford University, Brown University, RISD, and iGEM created this stool around 2018 after cultivating mycelium over a two-week period. (Courtesy of NASA)

Fungal-built buildings would primarily be used for longer journeys lasting from a few months to a few years. Simply put, astronauts would lay down the bricks, add water, and the fungus would grow to create a fully functioning human habitat, according to NASA, in a non-intrusive way that would have a minimal impact on the Martian environment.

NASA continues that the fungal building would essentially be a three-layered dome in cross section. The outermost layer would be made from frozen water ice harvested from Martian or lunar sources. The water layer would protect the structure from radiation and would connect to the second layer made from cyanobacteria.

This second layer would use external light filtering through the ice to capture water and photosynthesize, producing oxygen for the astronauts and the nutrients needed to create a final layer of mycelium. The third, innermost layer would grow organically as a home capable of supporting human life on Mars or the Moon.

The effort is being led by Lynn Rothschild, a senior research scientist at NASA Ames Research Center, and a program called NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NAIC), which is researching ways to use synthetic materials.

NASA first announced it was researching fungi as a space building material when it launched the “Fungal Building Project” in 2020. Currently, traditional habitat designs for Mars are like a turtle carrying a house on its back, a solid plan but with huge energy costs, Rothschild said at the project's launch four years ago. Instead, they could use mycelium to grow their own habitat once they arrive on Mars.

Today, Rothschild believes there's room to build fungal structures on Earth, given their sustainable and biodegradable properties. When designing for space, Rothschild says, we have much more freedom to try out new ideas and materials than we do on Earth. And once these prototypes are designed for other worlds, we can bring them back to Earth.

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