20 Mars-Related Technology Development Ideas for a Startup Company
Twenty technologies needed for human civilization on Mars — each representing both an engineering challenge and a potential startup opportunity.
On February 27, 2019, I participated in a Fireside Chat with Sean McClinton of the Seattle Space Entrepreneurs, in my role as the organizer of the Seattle chapter of The Mars Society. I have been a volunteer for the Mars Society for over 20 years, and we are the world’s largest nonprofit focused on the human exploration and settlement of Mars.
At this event, I presented a survey of technologies that could be developed today to support building a human civilization on Mars — each of which also represents a viable foundation for a 21st century startup company. The dual-use nature of these technologies is key: solving hard problems for Mars drives innovation that directly benefits life on Earth, from sustainable agriculture to energy storage to advanced materials.
For each technology, I provide the key goal as it relates to Mars settlement, the core engineering problem, and where relevant, context on current progress.
[Editor’s note: This article was originally written in March 2019. Inline updates have been added where significant progress has occurred since publication.]
1. In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU)
Goal: Produce methane-based rocket propellant from carbon dioxide and water using the Sabatier reaction with indigenous Martian atmosphere and water ice.
The Sabatier reaction (CO₂ + 4H₂ → CH₄ + 2H₂O) is the cornerstone of Mars return-trip architecture. By reacting carbon dioxide — which makes up 95% of the Martian atmosphere — with hydrogen, you produce methane and water. The methane serves as rocket fuel (the same propellant used by SpaceX’s Raptor engines), and the water can be electrolyzed to produce breathable oxygen and recycle the hydrogen feedstock. This is what makes a round-trip Mars mission feasible without carrying return fuel from Earth.
Problem: Creating miniaturized extraction and conversion hardware that can operate autonomously on the Martian surface, or scaling the process up to produce fuel quantities sufficient for a settlement. [Update: NASA’s MOXIE experiment on the Perseverance rover successfully demonstrated oxygen production from Martian CO₂ in 2021–2023, producing about 122 grams of oxygen — a small but historic proof of concept.]
2. Advanced Materials Production
Goal: Use indigenous Martian resources to produce textiles, building materials, electronics components, and other manufactured goods.
Problem: Developing miniaturized equipment for materials processing adapted to Martian feedstocks, and inventing new processing techniques for a resource base that differs significantly from Earth’s.
3. Synthetic Mars Regolith
Goal: Produce large quantities of high-fidelity Mars regolith simulant on Earth for research and testing. Tons of material will be needed across academic, government, and commercial programs.
Several simulants already exist — notably MGS-1 (developed by the University of Central Florida) and the earlier JSC Mars-1A — but each targets different aspects of Martian soil chemistry. The challenge lies in accurately replicating the perchlorate content. Perchlorates (ClO₄⁻) are salts found throughout Martian regolith at concentrations of 0.5–1% by weight. They are toxic to humans — specifically, they interfere with thyroid function — and must be addressed before regolith can be used for agriculture.
Problem: Producing affordable simulant at scale with accurate perchlorate chemistry. [Update: Our MDRS Crew 261 mission demonstrated that Mars regolith simulant amended with compost and spirulina biostimulants can support tomato seedling growth — research subsequently published in Nature.]
4. 3-D Printing for Mars
Goal: Print habitats, structural components, replacement parts, and potentially food using indigenous materials or lightweight feedstock shipped from Earth.
Problem: Developing 3-D printers reliable enough for mission-critical applications in a remote environment where replacement parts cannot be shipped. Ideally, printers that can produce their own replacement components from available feedstocks.
5. Mars Agriculture
Goal: Grow food crops in processed Martian soil to support a permanent settlement.
Mars regolith contains many of the mineral elements plants need (iron, magnesium, potassium) but lacks organic matter, beneficial microorganisms, and proper soil structure. The perchlorate problem is particularly acute for agriculture: these salts must be removed or neutralized before food crops can safely grow in regolith.
Problem: Developing efficient perchlorate remediation techniques, adding organic amendments to create viable growing media, and designing closed-loop water recycling for agricultural systems. [Update: Our Crew 261 experiment demonstrated one promising approach — using spirulina-based biostimulants and compost amendments to transform regolith simulant into a viable growing medium. The spirulina also positively altered root microbiome communities, enhancing nitrogen uptake and stress tolerance.]
6. Closed-Loop Life Support
Goal: A life support system that can regenerate breathable air, potable water, and food indefinitely using biological processes, operating for years without external resupply.
This is perhaps the most critical and least mature technology on this list. No fully closed-loop life support system has ever been demonstrated at scale. Biosphere 2, the most ambitious attempt, experienced critical failures — primarily due to unexpected CO₂ absorption by the facility’s unsealed concrete and oxygen consumption by soil microorganisms, which were engineering oversights rather than fundamental biological impossibilities.
Problem: Achieving the required closure rates (the percentage of resources recycled vs. resupplied) for multi-year operations. Current space station life support recycles water and some atmosphere but relies heavily on resupply. [Update: ESA’s MELiSSA (Micro-Ecological Life Support System Alternative) program continues to be the most advanced effort in this space, developing a closed-loop system based on interconnected biological compartments including algae, bacteria, and higher plants.]
7. Space-Rated Electronics
Goal: Radiation-hardened electronics using modern semiconductor architectures, not the decades-old designs currently certified for space use.
Problem: The qualification process for space-rated electronics is extremely lengthy and expensive, creating a paradox where the most advanced chips available for space missions are generations behind commercial technology. Novel approaches to rad-hardening — or architectures that gracefully tolerate radiation-induced errors — could dramatically accelerate the electronics available for deep space missions.
8. Mars Surface Vehicles
Goal: Electric or methane-powered surface transportation for crew mobility during EVAs and between outposts, ranging from personal mobility devices to pressurized rovers.
Problem: These vehicles must be designed and tested on Earth under simulated Mars conditions before deployment, and must operate reliably in an environment with extreme temperature swings (-60°C average), pervasive fine dust, and reduced gravity.
9. Mars Agriculture: Beverage Crops
Goal: Cultivate or synthesize the compounds needed to produce coffee, tea, and other beverages that support crew morale and psychological well-being on long-duration missions.
Crew psychology research consistently identifies food variety and comfort foods as critical factors in long-duration mission performance. Coffee cultivation presents specific challenges: Coffea arabica requires narrow temperature ranges (18–24°C), specific altitude-related atmospheric pressures, and a 3–5 year maturation period from planting to first harvest.
Problem: Developing accelerated growth techniques or biosynthetic pathways for caffeine and the flavor compounds that constitute the 1,000+ volatile chemicals in brewed coffee, within the constraints of a Mars greenhouse.
10. Chemical Processing
Goal: Conduct chemical processing at both laboratory and industrial scale on Mars, for fuel production, water purification, materials processing, and perchlorate remediation.
Problem: Designing chemical processing equipment that is compact enough to fit on a rocket, yet scalable to production volumes that can support a growing settlement. The process must handle Martian-specific challenges including perchlorate removal from water and regolith.
11. Accredited Education with a Mars Focus
Goal: Create accredited certification and degree programs teaching the interdisciplinary skills required for Mars settlement: astronautics, materials science, closed-loop agriculture, orbital mechanics, habitat engineering, and ISRU.
Problem: This may be the most immediately achievable item on this list — the knowledge base exists; it needs to be organized into coherent curricula with hands-on analog research components.
12. Mars-Rated Batteries
Goal: Energy storage systems capable of operating across the extreme thermal range on Mars (approximately -120°C to +20°C) with high reliability and energy density.
Problem: Battery failure in a Mars habitat or during EVA is potentially fatal. Lithium-ion batteries experience significant capacity loss and increased internal resistance at low temperatures. Mars surface operations require either batteries designed for extreme cold or thermal management systems that maintain batteries within their operating range — both adding mass and complexity.
13. Dust Mitigation and Air Filtration
Goal: Prevent Martian dust from contaminating habitats, equipment, and crew health.
Martian dust particles average 3 micrometers in diameter — fine enough to penetrate deep into lung tissue. The dust also contains perchlorates and may contain reactive superoxides created by UV radiation. Chronic exposure poses serious respiratory and toxicological risks.
Problem: Designing airlock and suit-cleaning systems that effectively remove sub-micron particles during repeated EVA cycles, combined with habitat air filtration capable of maintaining medical-grade air quality over years of continuous operation.
14. Radiation Shielding
Goal: Protect crew and equipment from both solar particle events (SPEs) and galactic cosmic rays (GCRs).
These are fundamentally different radiation challenges. SPEs are bursts of high-energy protons from solar flares — dangerous but intermittent, and blockable with modest shielding (a few centimeters of water, regolith, or polyethylene). GCRs are far more problematic: they consist of high-energy heavy ions (like iron nuclei) traveling at near-light speed, which can penetrate meters of conventional shielding and generate secondary radiation as they pass through material.
Problem: No practical passive shielding solution fully addresses GCR exposure. Active magnetic shielding — generating an artificial magnetosphere around a habitat — has been demonstrated in laboratory settings but has not been engineered for deployment. [Update: NASA’s Mars 2020 mission included the RAD instrument, and the Perseverance rover continues to collect surface radiation data that informs shielding requirements.]
15. Martian Concrete from Indigenous Materials
Goal: Produce durable construction material from Martian resources for habitat construction, landing pads, roads, and radiation shielding.
One promising approach is Pycrete — a composite of approximately 86% water ice and 14% organic filler (sawdust in Earth applications) — which exhibits compressive strength comparable to concrete and is remarkably resistant to cracking. On Mars, where ambient temperatures keep water permanently frozen across much of the surface, ice-based construction materials could be highly practical.
Problem: No one has demonstrated Martian concrete production using actual regolith or high-fidelity simulants under Mars-relevant temperature and pressure conditions.
16. Partial Gravity Biomedical Research
Goal: Understand the long-term effects of 38% Earth gravity on human physiology — bone density, cardiovascular function, muscle atrophy, vestibular adaptation, and reproductive biology.
Problem: We have extensive data on microgravity effects (from the ISS) and full gravity (from Earth), but virtually no data on partial gravity. We do not know whether 0.38g is sufficient to prevent the bone loss and cardiovascular deconditioning observed in microgravity. This is one of the largest unknowns in Mars mission planning and could be addressed with a variable-gravity centrifuge on the ISS or a dedicated orbital research platform.
17. Flight on Mars
Goal: Develop aerial vehicles — drones, jetpacks, or flying platforms — for Mars surface exploration. Mars’s lower gravity (38% of Earth’s) makes flight easier in terms of lift, but its thin atmosphere (less than 1% of Earth’s surface pressure) makes generating aerodynamic lift extremely difficult.
Problem: Conventional wing and rotor designs must be radically redesigned for Mars’s atmospheric density. Rotor blades must spin much faster or be much larger to generate adequate lift. [Update: NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter — deployed from the Perseverance rover in 2021 — spectacularly validated this concept, completing 72 flights over nearly three years on Mars, far exceeding its original 5-flight technology demonstration mission. Ingenuity proved that powered, controlled flight is achievable in the Martian atmosphere and opened the door to aerial exploration as a standard component of future Mars missions.]
18. Data and Telemetry Analytics
Goal: Process, prioritize, and analyze the massive data streams generated by Mars surface operations — imagery, biomedical telemetry, habitat sensor data, geological surveys, and atmospheric measurements.
Problem: Mars-Earth communication bandwidth is severely limited. The Deep Space Network provides the only link, with data rates ranging from roughly 500 kbps to 2 Mbps depending on orbital geometry. On-board AI and edge computing for data triage — deciding what to transmit vs. store locally — will be essential.
19. Mars Analog Research and Crew Training
Goal: Create high-fidelity simulations on Earth to train prospective Mars crews in mission operations, field research, and habitat maintenance. The Mars Society’s MDRS and FMARS stations have pioneered this approach for over two decades.
Problem: Analog bases are expensive to build and maintain, and the most geologically appropriate Mars analog environments are in remote, logistically challenging locations — the Canadian Arctic, the Utah desert, the Atacama in Chile, or Iceland’s volcanic highlands. [Update: I commanded MDRS Crew 261 in 2023, conducting 16 experiments across biology, medicine, engineering, and robotics during a two-week analog mission. We also developed MarsVR, a virtual reality training simulation of MDRS built in Unreal Engine, to complement physical analog training.]
20. Partial Gravity Exercise and Fitness
Goal: Develop exercise protocols and equipment optimized for maintaining human health in 38% gravity over multi-year stays on Mars, and for preparing Mars residents to readapt to Earth’s gravity upon return.
Problem: This research requires either a partial-gravity research platform (which does not yet exist) or carefully designed bed-rest and analog studies that approximate the physiological effects of reduced gravity.
Conclusion
Each of these twenty technologies represents a genuine engineering challenge, a potential commercial opportunity, and a building block for human civilization beyond Earth. What makes this list compelling is the dual-use potential: solutions developed for Mars drive innovation in sustainable agriculture, energy storage, materials science, and remote operations that directly benefit life on Earth. The hardest problems on Mars are often amplified versions of problems we already face here.
Pick any one of these and start building. Future Martians will thank you — and the rest of us will benefit along the way.
