Living on Mars without leaving Earth

_{Tekst: Tessa Louwerens | Foto: Rebeca Gonçalves}

When she first saw the white domes rising up from the red sand of the Utah desert against a backdrop of barren hills, alumnus Rebeca Gonçalves felt as if she had entered another world. ‘It looks alien,’ she recalls, ‘but also very beautiful.’ This moment marked the start of two weeks living and working inside the Mars simulation station as chief scientist and ‘Mars gardener’.

Gonçalves led two crop cultivation experiments she had developed in collaboration with Wageningen researcher Wieger Wamelink. The experiments were financed by Wamelink’s organisation BASE (Bioregenerative Astrofood & Sustenance Engineering), which focuses on sustainable food production for future space missions.

One project explored how sterile regolith, the loose mineral material covering the surface of Mars, could be turned into soil capable of supporting plant growth. She compared radish cultivation in different systems, including regolith simulants and hydroponics, in which plants grow in nutrient-rich water.

Another experiment involved tomato seeds that had spent 60 days aboard the International Space Station (ISS). ‘A journey from Earth to Mars takes about seven months,’ she explains. ‘During that time, the seeds are exposed to near-weightlessness and higher cosmic radiation. We need to know if they will still germinate when they arrive. And they did.’ It’s important to do these tests in this isolated dome, she emphasises. ‘On Mars, you won’t just be a scientist. You’ll also be maintaining and repairing equipment and dealing with the psychological stress. We need to know if this is feasible before we actually go into space.’

Conducting research was one thing; living in the simulation station was another. Once the crew of five had sealed the entrance, daily life revolved around strict rationing of water and energy. After all, on Mars every drop of water will need to be recycled or extracted from local ice deposits. ‘You become incredibly aware of how much water you normally waste,’ says Gonçalves. ‘Even throwing away two sips of coffee suddenly felt impossible, and we only showered once during those two weeks.’ Meals consisted mostly of freeze-dried food, and fresh produce became a minor luxury. ‘When we harvested lettuce from the greenhouse, it felt amazing,’ she says.

The psychological challenges proved the hardest. ‘I was warned, but it was much tougher than I expected.’ The international team consisted of researchers from different countries, each with their own experiments and habits. ‘Living at such close quarters inevitably creates tension – it’s like a pressure cooker,’ says Gonçalves. ‘You soon learn how important it is to understand each other’s personalities, resolve conflicts and manage expectations. At the same time, it created unexpected connections. We trauma-bonded for life,’ she laughs.

For Gonçalves, the intense experience in Utah was the culmination of a long journey that began when she was growing up in Brazil. As a child, she spent hours talking about astronomy with her uncle. Yet she decided to study biology. ‘Like many people, I assumed that working in the space industry meant becoming an astronaut, and that seemed unrealistic.’

Years later, her fascination for space resurfaced and she looked around for courses. That search led her to Wageningen University & Research, where she discovered researcher Wieger Wamelink describing himself as a ‘space farmer’.

‘I thought: that’s it. So I contacted him.’ In 2020, she started a Master’s in biology at Wageningen and got involved in Wamelink’s research on growing vegetables in Mars soil simulants. Working with Wamelink proved decisive. It meant she could publish early research on growing Mars crops. ‘It was a catapult for my career,’ she says.

Since 2023, Gonçalves has been part of the Space Farming Brazil Network, which focuses within NASA’s Artemis programme on agricultural technologies for future lunar missions. She also travels across Brazil to give talks in schools, often in underprivileged areas, encouraging young people, especially girls, to pursue careers in science. ‘These kids rarely meet scientists. When they see someone like me, they realise it is possible after all.’

For Gonçalves, research on farming in space is closely linked to the challenges on our own planet. ‘The culture in the space sector is very much that every innovation should also benefit life on Earth,’ she says. ‘Technologies such as solar panels, GPS, advanced water filtration and even diapers all emerged from space research.’

Her work on transforming sterile regolith into fertile soil could help restore degraded farmland on Earth. ‘Exploring other worlds is not about escaping this planet,’ she says, ‘but about learning how to take better care of the only home we have.’