Mushroom houses will appear on the Moon and Mars: what is known about NASA's grandiose plans and why it abandoned the board and brick

NASA has announced that mushroom houses will appear on the Moon and Mars. The space agency has signed a $2 million contract with the Ames Research Center to further study and develop "mycotecture".

The space agency is seriously considering the possibility of growing future residential structures from mushrooms for space colonies on the surface of the Moon and Mars. After all, it is extremely expensive to use traditional building materials such as bricks or boards in space, Al Jazeera writes.

According to American architect Chris Maurer, sending fungal spores and mixing them with "local" lunar material such as water and regolith to make bricks would be significantly cheaper than bringing conventional building materials into space.

NASA research has also shown that mushroom building blocks can deflect most cosmic radiation, provide insulation from extreme temperatures, and can be grown very quickly in one to two months. So it's a futuristic and highly efficient alternative to conventional materials.

According to experts, growing a mushroom house on the moon will begin with landing a special package on the surface of the satellite. Then the inside of the package is inflated, and a mixture of fungal spores, water, and algae grows an outer shell that eventually hardens, creating a new structure suitable for life.

While the first experiments on Earth have been successful, unforeseen complications may still arise in space, scientists say.

A group of fungus researchers led by Lynn Rothschild, a senior scientist at NASA Ames, is about to test their method beyond Earth. The scientists want to send a conceptual model of their invention into space in 2028, along with the launch of the commercial space station Starlab.

"There are technological risks. Will the design be strong enough? Will it really provide the insulation we think it will? What will be the material properties? Will it really grow well?" said Rothschild.

However, if everything goes according to plan, future colonies on the Moon and Mars will grow like mushrooms after a warm rain, NASA experts say.

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