Category Archives: Self-Sufficient Communities

eXploration Habitat (X-Hab) Academic Innovation Challenge 2015

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xhab1

xhab1 ( photo credit: Space Grant)

The eXploration Habitat (X-Hab) 2015 Academic Innovation Challenge is a university-level competition involving hands-on design, research, development, and manufacture of functional prototypical subsystems  for space habitats and deep space exploration missions. The Advanced Exploration Systems (AES) Exploration Augmentation Module (EAM) project will offer multiple X-Hab awards of $10k – $20k each.

NASA will  benefit from the challenge by sponsoring the development of innovative concepts and technologies from universities, which will result in innovative ideas and solutions that could be applied to exploration.

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Sub-Arctic Biodome: Prototype for Space Settlement?

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EOS logoThe Earth Organisation for Sustainability (EOS) is building a geodesic biodome near the edge of the Arctic Circle, with the goal of self-sufficient food production. EOS has received an European Union grant of 34,000 €  delivered by URnära, for construction materials and initial wages, and is working with Green Free Will.

Galileo Ground Station Inaugurated in the Arctic 2

Galileo Ground Station, Esrange Space Centre, Kiruna, Sweden

The EOS is developing both technology and social systems for self-sufficent communities of the future. So the Biodome can provide lessons for developing space settlements, such as on Mars. Umeå is in Northern Sweden, just a few hundred kilometres from the Esrange Space Center in Kiruna. Though Umeå is not as far north as the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station near Resolute, Canada, sunlight is in short supply much of the year, and temperatures can get as cold as -38C (-36 F).

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