Mars Foundation Completes Groundbreaking Mars Settlement Study,

Reading, Massachusetts - The Mars Foundation™ has completed a comprehensive, 8-month, pre-design study of the first human settlement on the planet Mars, an effort called the Mars Homestead™ Project. This study verifies that a permanent settlement can be established early in the course of human Mars exploration by using near-term technologies and local mars resources. The unprecedented, unified Mars settlement design and vision places the Mars Foundation at the forefront of understanding in this field.

The Mars Foundation’s global team of 21 scientists and engineers has examined the needs of the proposed settlement, developed technical concepts for Mars-based life support and resource utilization, and identified core technologies. Detailed concepts have been generated for many technical disciplines including agriculture, architecture, electrical distribution, bulk gas, HVAC, instrumentation and controls, information technology, medicine, psychology, nuclear power, waste recycling, polymer manufacturing, and metals manufacturing systems.

The Mars Homestead team will present results of this study in various peer-reviewed publications and conferences, beginning with the July SAE-ICES (International Conference on Environmental Systems) in Rome. At this conference, Georgi Petrov, team architect and recent graduate of the MIT School of Architecture, presented a paper that describes the Homestead's architectural design. In August, at the Mars Society Convention in Boulder, Colorado, the team will deliver a track of eight presentations covering multiple technical areas. Additional presentations of study results and technical concepts will be given at the Meridiani Base Workshop in August, and at the ASCE Earth & Space, AIAA Habitation, NSS International Space Development, and MIT Mars-Week conferences in the coming year.

The Mars Foundation's scientific and technical team continues to refine and expand upon these concepts. They have created a settlement technology roadmap, and are establishing a series of special task forces that are making more detailed investigations of specific technical areas not covered in the initial study, including space suit design, Earth-Mars transport, robotic automation and surface vehicle design. These efforts are being pursued with the assistance of student groups at MIT, University of Illinois, University of Central Florida, and University of Michigan.

More information about The Mars Foundation is available at www.MarsHome.com
"Mars Foundation", "Mars Homestead", "Mars Homestead Project" are trademarks of the Mars Foundation.