Weaving Life into Regolith: Engineered Autotrophic-Heterotrophic Consortia for Autonomous Biofabrication from Granular Feedstocks

arXiv:2406.02522v4 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Long-duration human missions to Mars will require autonomous systems capable of converting in situ resources into structural materials, tools, and functional components. More broadly, such systems represent a class of resource-limited bioprocesses relevant to extreme-environment manufacturing. Here, we investigate engineered autotrophic-heterotrophic consortia, inspired by lichen biology, as a platform for autonomous biofabrication from granula...