The dusty, rocky plains, mountains and dry riverbeds of Israel’s Negev Desert stand in for the landscape of Mars in a new experimental project that aims to help astronauts thrive on the surface of the Red Planet. SAGA Space Architects collaborated with D-MARS, a space analog research center in Israel, to create The Mars Lab – which comes complete with lightweight architecture designed to withstand Mars’ lack of atmosphere.

As SAGA explains, it’s actually the desert of Wadi Rum in southern Jordan that most closely resembles the red Martian landscape. They’ve previously experimented with imagining the future experiences of astronauts on this distant planet through “missions” with sparse food and water, no communication with the outside world and no sensory or mental stimuli, all to learn what astronauts will need out of their living environments. For the purposes of training Israeli space explorers through inhabiting confined spaces, Negev serves well, with its geology, aridity and isolation feeling similar enough to the real Martian environment. The habitat will serve as a prototype for a longer mission scheduled for next year.

“D-MARS will simulate a mission to Mars or other planets, allowing analog astronauts (or “Ramonauts”) to live on-site as real explorers; the daily routine, food, communication and other challenges will be very similar to those faced in the future during an actual planetary mission.”

“Establishing the D-MARS space analog mission in the Negev Desert will allow Israel to make a significant contribution to the world-wide effort to prepare humanity for the exploration of the planet Mars and our solar system, while also benefiting the economy, technology development and educational community of the state of Israel as a whole.”

The lightweight expandable architecture of the Mars Lab features thin faceted framework and flexible protective translucent membranes, which can withstand at least one bar of atmospheric pressure. A durable shell folds around the membrane during transit and landing to keep it from puncturing. Inside, an algae photo-bioreactor takes in carbon dioxide and produces oxygen for the astronauts. The whole thing is designed to have a minimal impact on its surroundings, both in Israel and on Mars.

A set of 30 candidates have been selected for final consideration by NASA in the 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge, including robot-constructed buildings, ice architecture and underground dwellings, all designed to turn challenges of building on Mars into opportunities. The three finalists shown below represent a subset of that range of compelling possibilities, varying in their approach to materials, automation and construction techniques.

Foster + Partners proposes parachuting a series of task-specific, semi-autonomous robots to the surface, building out structures before the arrival of humans. These robotic helpers will dig holes, organize rocks and soil into building materials and use microwaves to fuse these components into place. More complex prefabricated components would then be installed into the system of resulting structures, preparing them for astronaut habitation.

The Ice House pitched by SEArch/Clouds Architecture Office offers connections between indoor and outdoor space via light filtered through frozen walls. Keeping NASA’s “follow the water” approach to space exploration in mind, the idea is to turn ice into a multilayered shell to enclose habitats and protected from radiation. “A unique 3D printing technique harnesses the physics of water and its phase transition to construct” structures.

The Mollusca L5  by LeeLabs combines inflatable shelters with fabricated structures made entirely from local surface materials. Sprawling organically like a slug, the habitat and storage areas are flexible and amorphous, combining hard walls and synthesized glass panels with soft cloth structures.

Common themes between projects include flexibility, modularity and redundancy – if either The Martian (a fictional story of a man lost on Mars) or Seveneves (in which humanity has to subsist in orbit for thousands of years) are any indication, surviving in space will mean facing challenges and overcoming obstacles through a combination of technology and ingenuity.

Artificial environments designed for space have thus far remained totally utilitarian, but what if more aesthetic considerations were brought into the mix? These design concepts range from constantly morphing art galleries for the International Space Station to a moon base built using existing 3D printing technology and designed by a renowned architecture firm.

Tate in Space: Cultural Center for the International Space Station

Artists, designers and other creatives haven’t exactly been included in the process of space exploration thus far, but this project by ETALAB aims to change that with an outer space gallery where artists, curators and visitors interact with works of art and architecture in zones of zero and partial gravity. Docked at the International Space Station, ‘Tate in Space’ features a flexible ‘envelope’ made from a smart material based on biomechanics that enables the space to constantly shift in shape.

Olympic Stadium for the Moon

Designed as part of the ‘MARS ONE’ project that aims to start colonizing Mars and other locations in space within a matter of mere years, SILO (Stadium International Lunar Olympics) is a stadium for the moon complete with a hotel, restaurants and a solar electric system as well as seats for 100,000. The designers say, “Within the lunar colonies of the future, recreational activities will arise and evolve to take advantage of the moon’s micro-gravity. The sports we know today will be modified, and brand new sports will be invented. Lunar sports associations will be created, teams will be sponsored, games will be televised, and people from all over the globe will watch as the best of the best compete in an arena in which all the rules have changed.”

Mars Colonization by ZA Architects

Solar-powered robots could excavate dwellings for humans on Mars before the people ever arrive in this concept by ZA Architects. Choosing areas where the basalt rock has formed into hexagonal columns, which can be easily removed to create cathedral-like spaces, the robots would weave web-like structures from basalt fibers to create floors at various levels within the caves.

Self-Assembling House for the Moon

A crowd-funding initiative will send a self-assembling house to the moon in October 15th on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 spacecraft. The building, designed by American aerospace company Astrobotic, will be made from a thin sheet of specially developed cloth stretched over a carbon frame. Once it’s placed on the lunar surface, it will fill up with gas and stand erect within five to fifteen minutes.

Russian Space Station Hotel

Russia’s plans for a space hotel would house seven guests in four cabins, 217 miles above the surface of the Earth. The hotel would also function as accommodations for scientists on space-related missions, and as an emergency blowhole for astronauts aboard the International Space Station. A five-day stay will set guests back $100,000 in addition to the half-million it costs to get to space in the first place.

Mars: Adrift on the Hourglass Sea

This series of fantastical images doesn’t even try to be technically correct or scientifically possible, but it was commissioned by NASA all the same to represent a vision of existence on Mars. The artists used photo-mosaic panoramas of expeditions by the rovers Spirit and Opportunity as backdrops for surreal scenes.

3D Moon Base by Foster + Partners

Architecture firm Foster + Partners, responsible for many iconic buildings on Earth, have designed a four-person lunar base that uses 3D printing technology to ‘print’ a protective layer of locally-sourced lunar soil over an inflatable dome. Commissioned by the European Space Agency, the project takes a look at the feasibility of actually building such a structure using currently existing technology.

Moon Dwelling by Royal Haskoning Architects

A transparent sphere houses living spaces for lunar residents in this concept by Royal Haskoning Architects, offering inhabitants unlimited views of the awe-inspiring setting if not a whole lot of privacy. But then again, who needs privacy when you live on the moon? A protective screen rotates around the sphere to protect the inside from the harsh rays of the sun. The sphere is envisioned as a mini-Earth with its own oxygen supply and various levels that inhabitants can simply float between rather than taking the stairs.

Martian Base by Janek Kozicki

Husband and wife design team Janek Kozicki and Joanna Kozicka have created a number of concept designs for Martian bases generally powered by either a radio-isotope generator or a small nuclear power plant, along with practical architectural guidelines for building on other planets. The design pictured above, by Kozicki, is a modular setup that would start with a single pod and grow with subsequent trips to and from Earth to ultimately accommodate several dozen people.

Inflatable Pods by Joanna Kozicka

Kozicka’s solutions include inflatable pods that are lightweight, easy to deploy, and ultimately offer a bigger payoff in terms of square footage for the size of the load sent to Mars. The designs address the sociopsychological problems that the couple identified in relation to living on another planet, avoiding isolated and confined environments in favor of large, comfortable spaces that let in sunlight and allow contact with nature.

Shackleton Crater Lunar Outpost

NASA’s Lunar Architecture Team is working on a design for a permanent lunar outpost that could be set up the next time humans land on the moon. Designed for Shackleton Crater, located at the south pole of the moon, the habitat would consist of larger modules sent ahead of time on a cargo lander.

Luna Ring Concept

The Luna Ring concept would put permanent solar collectors around the moon’s equator like a belt, with solar cells collecting energy that would then be beamed back to Earth via microwave power transmission antennae. A team of astronauts would supervise the robot construction workers carrying out the installation process.

Fractal Lunar Architecture

A fractal design for a lunar base by Hatem Al Khafaji of Dubai makes it easy to expand the available space as needed using a system of seven modular components of living pods, air locks, corridors and connectors. Layers of these modules would be placed around a central ‘heart’ and continuously stacked by teams of robots and human workers.

There is no witty wordplay nor shocking truth in our title today, but that is quite by design – we simply did not want risk underselling Roman Mars, the maker of a radio show that covers architecture, design and cities at a level more than sufficiently clever to speak for itself. Below, we will share with you a hand-selected set of some of the most fascinating episodes 99% Invisible has aired to date. If you like what you hear, be sure to support the program on Kickstarter.

Roman Mars, host of 99% Invisible and Progam Director of Public Radio Remix from PRX, crafts artful stories that reveal hidden realities in the built environments around us and celebrate secret histories of seemingly ordinary spaces. Roman has 450,000 listeners on SoundCloud and has won praise from the likes of This American Life and RadioLab – two programs that this author has regularly compared to 99% Invisible (“It’s like RadioLab for design geeks”).

Today, from the lawless metropolis of Kowloon Walled City to the tame suburbs of the American cul-de-sac and beyond, we invite you to explore a series of compelling stories from this stellar radio show, with more links and information at the end of this article.

Kowloon Walled City – Den of Iniquity [Episode 66]

Kowloon Walled City, covered previously on WebUrbanist, was a lawless metropolis – a strange no-mans-land between (then) British Hong Kong and mainland China. “By its peak in the 1990s, the 6.5 acre Kowloon Walled City was home to at least 33,000 people (with estimates of up to 50,000). That’s a population density of at least 3.2 million per square mile. For New York City to get that dense, every man, woman, and child living in Texas would have to move to Manhattan.” Even with pictures, it is almost impossible to visualize – but listen to the above tale and it starts to come alive the same way a fictional city rises from the pages of a book.

Cul-De-Sac – Symbol of Suburbia [Episode 29]

The cul-de-sac once represented the American Dream, but has in the minds of many turned from a utopian ideal to a dystopian symbol of dead-end suburban life.  “When people critique cul-de-sacs, a lot of the time, they’re actually critiquing the suburbs more generally. The cul-de-sac has become sort of like the mascot of the suburbs– like if suburbia had a flag, it would have a picture of a cul-de-sac on it. Cul-de-sacs by definition aren’t well connected to other streets and they are far away town centers. For little kids, cul-de-sacs can be great, but they do have some real, quantifiable design flaws.” In the episode above, Roman and a guest explore the back and forth, exploring the evolution and alternating emphasis on urbanization and suburbanization, and changes in regulation that first allowed and are are now destroying these strange street layouts.

In and Out of LOVE – Skating in the Park [Episode 71]

Skateboarding enjoys a dubious reputation in most cities – some places are set aside for skateboarders in some cases, but many of the best impromptu skate parks (at least: from the perspective of skaters) are those that are forbidden. “Though its official name is JFK Plaza, the open space near Philadelphia’s City Hall is more commonly known as LOVE Park. With its sleek granite benches, geometric raised planter beds, and long expanses of pavement, its success as a pedestrian plaza is debatable. But it turned out to be perfect for skateboarding. As skateboarding culture grew in the 1990s, LOVE Park became a Mecca of the skating world–even though skateboarding was officially banned there.” Even if you hate having a skateboarder whip by you on the sidewalk, you may find yourself softening to their perspective as you listen to this episode.

The Pruitt-Igoe Myth – Urban Renewal [Episode 44]

Every urbanist knows the troubled story of mid-century urban renewal, but here is a particular story of a specific building that came to symbolize everything that was wrong with modern attempts to make housing projects of the future. “The Pruitt-Igoe housing project in St. Louis became most famous at the moment of its demise. The thirty-three high-rise towers built in the 1950’s were supposed to solve the impending population crisis in inner city St. Louis. It was supposed to save the urban poor from the indignities of the downtown slums that lacked natural light, water and fresh air. And for a short while, it worked. It was a housing marvel. But when conditions started to decline, everything got very bad, very fast. It got so bad, only two decades after it was built; the housing authority blew it up.”  The image of the building’s implosion became iconic, a symbol of endings – but was it the architecture, or was it larger urban-to-suburban shift and other demographic factors at work?

Sounds of the Artificial World – Digital Feedback [Episode 15]

As a radio show, 99% Invisible often offers insight specifically into the sounds of cities and everyday life – in this case: those little gadgets we carry with us and use so much of the time. From mysterious noises to ordinary devices, we take sound in our environments for granted – but many of these have been carefully designed. “Without all the beeps and chimes, without sonic feedback, all of your modern conveniences would be very hard to use. If a device and its sounds are designed correctly, it creates a special ‘theater of the mind’ that users completely buy into. Electronic things are made to feel mechanical. It’s the feeling of movement, texture and articulation where none exists.” In this episode, Roman talks with Sound Designer Jim McKee of Earwax Productions “about the art of designing organic sounds for inorganic things.”

The Accidental Music of Imperfect Escalators [Episode 43]

What is the sound of one escalator clapping? “Ever since the industrial revolution, when it became possible for products to be designed just once and then mass produced, it has been the slight imperfections and wear introduced by human use that has transformed a quality mass produced product into a thing we love. Your worn blue jeans, your grandmothers iron skillet, the initial design determined their quality, but it’s their imperfections that make them comfortable, that make them lovable, that make them yours.” Yes, as it turns out, the auditory emissions of broken escalators have fans, some who claim that like a fine wine their sounds get better with time.

Sound of Sport – Secrets of Sampling [Episode 38]

What you may never have realized in watching sports is that the natural sounds of the activity can be impossible to capture … so they have to be prerecorded, then replayed on cue during live coverage.  “If Dennis Baxter and Bill Whiston are doing their job right, you probably don’t notice that they’re doing their job. But they are so good at doing their job, that you probably don’t even know that their job exists at all. They are sound designers for televised sporting events. Their job is to draw the audience into the action and make sports sound as exciting as possible, and this doesn’t mean they put a bunch of microphones on the field. This episode of 99% Invisible is produced by Peregrine Andrews for Falling Tree Productions. It is an extract from a much longer, and really stunning doc called “The Sound of Sport.” So of all of those sounds you hear while watching the Olympics, many are faked on the spot by sound designers you are not even supposed to know exist.

But all of this is just a sound clip, a small audio sample. If you are interested in more, you should follow along on SoundCloud. Meanwhile, here are a few more episode suggestions to get you started. Get a sense of the Xanadu Effect, and begin to understand that bigger is not always better. Learn how one designer decided to make insurance sexy in What Gave You That Idea. In The Bathtub or the Boiler Room, follow someone with the boldness to enter any door that will physically open to them as they walk the halls of power in Washington, DC. Then, step back out into the city and explore The Arsenal of Exclusion – tools of urban planners, developers and designers to enhance or restrict access to public spaces.

Our thanks again to Roman Mars for helping this author (who has personally listened to every last episode) select personal as well as fan and staff favorites for this piece, and to his colleagues and partners helping make 99% possible, including Sam Greenspan and KALW San Francisco. You can become a part of the program as well by lending your support via the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter as Roman aims to make the show weekly in Season 4.

Not since Evel Knievel have wheels flown so far: robotic rovers designed to travel over unearthly alien terrain where no one has gone before, and where no roads await their wheels. Led by the “red rovers” of the former Soviet Union, these 10 roving robotic space explorers are driven to roll back the mysteries of our nearest planetary neighbors.

Lunokhod 1 (USSR, 1970-71)

(images via: Aerospaceweb, Wiedenhoff and Lunar Networks)

Lunokhod means “moon walker” in Russian but we can call it “the little red rover that could.” Overshadowed by the hugely publicized American manned lunar landing just over a year before, Lunokhod 1 was nonetheless a triumph of engineering (especially that of the Soviet variety) and holds the honor of being the first remote-controlled rover to land and operate on another heavenly body.

(image via: NASA/NSSDC)

Lunokhod 1 was launched on November 10th, 1970, and the Luna 17 spacecraft carrying it made a successful soft landing on the Moon one week later. Though designed to function for three lunar days (about 3 months), Lunokhod 1 surpassed all expectations by roving a total of 6.55 miles (10,540 meters) over a period of 11 lunar days: almost one full Earth year.

Lunokhod 2 (USSR, 1973)

(images via: Lunar Networks, Wikipedia and StampRussia)

Emboldened by Lunokhod 1’s success, the USSR tweaked the rover’s basic design somewhat and sent Lunokhod 2 moonward just over a year later: the Luna 21 spacecraft landed on January 15th, 1973. Like its predecessor, Lunokhod 2 was designed with a round, clamshell lid which was lined with solar panels. The lid was opened during the lunar day and closed at night, when onboard radioisotope generators kept the equipment warm.

(image via: Elias_Daniel)

Lunokhod 2 operated through the better part of 5 lunar days and covered a total distance of 23 miles or 37 km; ground controllers lost contact with it in early June of 1973. It’s thought that the open clamshell lid may have brushed the rim of a crater, causing moon dust to fall onto the rover’s components and prevent necessary cooling. In 2010, researchers studying images returned by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) found the final resting places of both Lunokhod rovers.

PrOP-M rovers (USSR, 1971)

(images via: Hoga.pl and CyberneticZoo)

The Soviet PrOP-M Mars mini-rovers were about as basic as you could get. Toaster-sized and equipped with a pair of ski-like flanges instead of wheels, the rovers were designed to explore the area immediately adjacent to the lander while remaining attached to the lander via a power and communications cable.

(image via: CyberneticZoo)

Two PrOP-M rovers were launched to Mars: one was aboard Mars 2, which crashed on Mars in late November of 1971. The second rover aboard Mars 3 safely soft-landed on December 2nd, 1971 but contact was lost with the lander just 14.5 seconds after landing. Only one image was sent back to ground controllers, which showed almost no detail and very low light levels: it’s thought that the lander’s communication systems were knocked out by a severe dust storm.

Sojourner (USA, 1997)

(images via: Aerospaceweb, Science Photo Library and Smithsonian NASM)

One of the highlights of NASA’s Mars Pathfinder mission was the Sojourner rover. The six-wheeled robotic explorer weighed just over 23 lbs (10.5 kg) and was 26 inches (65 cm) long. Sojourner was equipped with a three-camera imaging system, an Alpha Proton X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) and a Wheel Abrasion Experiment used to analyze Martian rocks. It’s advanced (for the time) onboard computer featured a 100 kHz Intel 80C85 CPU with 176 KB of flash memory solid-state storage and 512 KB of RAM.

(image via: NASA)

Sojourner was extremely successful, functioning for 83 Mars days following its landing on July 4th, 1997 and sending back 550 photos back to Earth. Like its namesake parent mission, Sojourner was the “pathfinder” for larger and more powerful rovers to come.

Spirit (USA, 2004-2010)

(images via: Daily Galaxy, National Geographic and How Stuff Works)

Spirit MER-A (Mars Exploration Rover A) landed on Mars on January 4th, 2004, and continued to function for an unprecedented length of time with last contact being received in March of 2010. Along with its twin rover Opportunity (MER-B), Spirit drove a total of 4.8 miles (7.73 km) and had its life extended several times after accidental cleaning of its solar panels by Martian dust-devils.

(image via: NewScientist)

A series of events including a broken wheel, being mired in deep sand and having to drive in reverse indicated the toughness of the rover in an unimaginably harsh environment. In fact, the last four months of Spirit’s “life” were spent immobile, stuck in sand with only 4 wheels capable of function.

Opportunity (USA, 2004-Present)

(images via: NASA Space Place, EarthSky and National Geographic)

At press time, NASA’s Opportunity rover is the only man-made object currently functioning on the surface of Mars. Landing on the opposite side of the planet from its twin rover, Spirit, Opportunity (officially MER-B) rolled off its lander platform on January 25th, 2004, and has since covered more than 21 miles (34 km) on its ongoing journey of exploration and discovery.

(image via: NASA/APOD)

Opportunity has so far outlasted its makers’ survival estimates by a factor of 30, and spent the better part of two years in and around Victoria Crater where it inspected layered outcrops that indicate Mars had a much warmer and wetter history than previously thought. Opportunity (and Spirit as well) incorporate aluminum salvaged from the World Trade Center in their construction. The metal was used to craft shields that protect cables on the rovers’ drilling mechanisms, and display the American flag as shown above.

Curiosity (USA, 2012)

(images via: CSMonitor, Space.com and Crunchyroll)

America’s latest (and by far the largest) planetary rover, dubbed Curiosity, successfully launched on November 26th, 2011, as part of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission to the Red Planet. The estimated landing date for MSL and its SUV-sized rolling cargo via the unproven “sky crane” method is August 5th of 2012.

(image via: Space.com)

Curiosity weighs a mammoth 1,984 pounds (900 kg) – that’s right, a ton! It’s 10 feet (3m) in length and is powered by a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) similar to those which powered the 1976 Viking landers. The 10.6 pounds (4.8 kg) of plutonium-238 dioxide inside the RTGs negate the need for solar panels and should provide more power over a longer period of time.

Chang’e 3 (China, 2013)

(images via: ECNS.cn, Moon Daily and Pakistan Defence Forum)

China has grand plans afoot for exploring the Moon and planets, but before a foot falls on the lunar seas, man-made wheels will chart the ground. The six-wheeled Chang’e 3 lunar probe’s rover, currently undergoing durability and endurance testing in the deserts of western China, is scheduled to touch down on the Moon sometime in 2013.

(image via: Pakistan Defence Forum)

The Chang’e 3 rover is being developed independently by China and will incorporate state-of-the-art intelligent robot technology that will allow it to explore and analyze an area up to 16,400 feet (5,000 m) from its lander.

Chandrayaan 2 (India, 2014)

(images via: Lunar Networks and Shashi Kumar Aansoo)

The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) scored an astronomical coup in 2008 when their Chandrayaan 1 lunar orbiter found strong evidence of water ice at the Moon’s north polar region. Now ISRO is preparing to follow up on that mission with an even more ambitious one: Chandrayaan 2, a lunar lander carrying a wheeled roving vehicle. ISRO is working with Russia’s Roscosmos to develop the combined orbiter-lander-rover mission scheduled for late 2013 or early 2014.

ExoMars (EU/USA, 2019)

(images via: NewScientist, Just Matt’s Blog and DLR)

ExoMars is an ambitious, two-part mission developed by the European Space Agency (ESA) with cooperation and participation by NASA. The mission involves an orbiter with a static lander to be launched in 2016 and a second launch two years later that will deposit the ExoMars rover on the surface of Mars in 2019.

(image via: Space CPST)

The ExoMars rover is a six-wheeled vehicle weighing approximately 650 pounds or 295 kg, which places it roughly between NASA’s MER rovers and the Curiosity rover size-wise. The rover’s most distinguishing feature is its autonomous software package that will allow the rover to make independent navigation decisions without any input from ground controllers on Earth. The rover can travel around 330 ft (100 m) daily and is being designed to have a working lifespan of about 218 Martian days (over 200 Earth days).

(image via: Geocaching)

Robot rovers make excellent pathfinders: where rovers go, Man will follow. It’s a sensible strategy for any space-faring race, which raises the question: if (or when) aliens send their roving explorers to Earth, will we be able to recognize them for what they are? Somehow I think we’ll have no trouble at all.