This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.

The scientists admit the feasibility and health effects of the method would need “significant further investigation,” but they suggest a single astronaut could fuel the creation of the equivalent of a single clay brick a month with their blood plasma alone. Over the course of a mission on Mars, they write, each astronaut “could produce enough additional habitat space to support another astronaut, potentially allowing the steady expansion of an early Martian colony.”