Future astronauts may not just be looking for life on Mars, but bringing life forms from Earth along with them, such as microbes that can help produce the building materials for a permanent human colony on the Red Planet.
As programs like NASA’s Artemis project seek to extend humanity’s reach toward an ongoing presence on the Moon and, eventually, on Mars, the logistics of these missions raise several questions. Sourcing local Lunar or Martian materials for these projects is now a major research area for mission planners, and an international team has provided new insights in a recent paper published in Frontiers in Microbiology.
The Harsh Red Planet
The surface of Mars is highly inhospitable to human life, due to billions of years of catastrophic changes that likely erased any past habitability. Any colonists will need an artificial air supply, as the planet’s atmosphere is extremely thin and composed chiefly of poisonous carbon dioxide. That atmospheric weakness also prevents effective regulation of the planet’s temperature, resulting in wild swings from a comfortable 79°F to an unsurvivable -194°F.
On top of all this, brutal cosmic radiation, bringing with it a significant cancer risk for future astronauts, showers the planet’s surface, unimpeded by its thin atmosphere.
Such a challenging environment—inimical to most complex life, let alone humans—will require robust shelters and life-support systems if any permanent settlement is to occur. Given long journeys, limited payload, and the tremendous expense of landing humans on Mars, mission planners are understandably concerned about using any available local resources.
Life on Mars Once and Again
Samples collected from Mars’ Jezero crater do not conclusively contain life, but they do hint that microbes may have inhabited the soil long ago. Although such microbes are not readily apparent, they still populate the Red Planet, and microbial life on Earth offers a chance to study how such organisms could impact Mars. One such process is biomineralization, in which microbes produce hard minerals, shaping the terrestrial landscape over long periods and operating in some of the most extreme environments on Earth.
Now, a team of international researchers has devised a way to harness natural biomineralization to produce sturdy building materials from Martian regolith. Among the methods the team studies, biocementation, a process where microbes generate calcium carbonate at room temperature, emerged as the most promising for practical implementation.
Bacterial Powerhouses
The team identified two bacteria that, when working in tandem, produce remarkable results. The first is Sporosarcina pasteurii, which, through a process called ureolysis, produces the desired calcium carbonate. The other is a cyanobacterium called Chroococcidiopsis, an extremely resilient organism capable of weathering environments as challenging as the Martian surface.
When co-located, Chroococcidiopsis acts as a natural life-support system, creating an oxygen-rich microenvironment in which Sporosarcina pasteurii can thrive. Additionally, Chroococcidiopsis secretes a substance that protects its microbial mate from the harsh UV radiation pouring over the Red Planet. In this protective bubble, Chroococcidiopsis is safe to secrete polymers, which turn the loose Martian regolith into a sturdy building material similar to concrete.
Bio-Based 3D Prints On Mars
Producing the raw materials is a massive step toward human permanence on the Red Planet, but the researchers did not stop there. They have also begun exploring the optimal method for erecting structures on the Martian surface from their microbial concrete.
The optical solution, the team says, would be to use giant 3D printers, fed on a mixture of their microbial pair and Martian soil. 3D-printed concrete buildings are a technology already well established on Earth, with one notable example being their use in constructing a Starbucks in Texas earlier this year.
The researchers’ focus on these two microbes doesn’t end with construction, as the team believes both could be useful for long-term life support operations. Chroococcidiopsis could be used to produce oxygen not just for microenvironments but also on a larger scale to produce breathable air for astronauts. On an even larger timescale, Sporosarcina pasteurii produces ammonia, which could be utilized in terraforming efforts, to fundamentally change Mars from the barren wasteland it is today into something more habitable.
For now, any practical implementation of such processes to permanently colonize Mars is likely to be at least a few decades away, though ongoing advancements are paving the way for a lasting human presence on the Moon and Mars to become a 21st-century reality.
The paper, “From Earth to Mars: A Perspective on Exploiting Biomineralization for Martian Construction,” appeared in Frontiers in Microbiology on December 2, 2025.
Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.