BIOLUNA Project Status – Plant Biology and Artificial Intelligence for Bio-Regenerative Life Support on the Moon

Establishing a sustained human presence on the Moon is a crucial milestone for validating technologies and procedures required for extended, deep-space missions. Due to its proximity to Earth, the Moon is an ideal testbed to investigate technologies and to prepare for Mars colonization and for the exploration of remote regions of the Solar System. A key enabling factor for human space exploration is minimizing reliance on Earth for vital resources. The sustainability of such missions will rely on Bio-Regenerative Life-Support Systems (BLSS), a model inspired by Earth’s biosphere for efficient resources management. These systems include “consumers” representing resource demand and waste generation (e.g. the crew), “producers” performing vital functions such as atmosphere revitalization, wastewater treatment, and food production (e.g. plant compartments and photo-bioreactors); and “decomposers” representing resource recycling and waste treatment (e.g. bioreactors and specific microorganisms). One of the main challenges in bio-regenerative environmental control systems is to identify operational conditions and control algorithms that optimize mass and energy flows. System complexity arises from the diverse dynamics within subsystems and biological processes. Numerous control variables and multiple objectives – such as maximizing energy use efficiency, maximizing useful product-to-waste ratios, and minimizing discrepancies in resource consumption and production rates across compartments – make it difficult to identify a suitable transfer function to manage both nominal and contingency configurations. The need for artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms arises from these complexities, as they allow for the multi-objective optimization required to control variable set-points through multiple parameters. In this context, the BIOLUNA project aims to develop and validate experimentally a simplified model of a lunar bio-regenerative life support system integrating producers, consumers and AI control algorithms. This paper describes the BIOLUNA project development status, the associated roadmap and the future perspectives.