Bioarchitectures CosmoEcology

Bioarchitectures CosmoEcology (2020) is an Art + Science project by Luis Guzmán that was part of the Sojourner2020 of the MIT Space Exploration Initiative, curated by Xin Liu, a microgravity payload that hosted a total of nine art projects aboard the International Space Station ISS between March and April 2020. The project aims to create a symbiotic technology for multispecies space colonization based in the cultivation of marine diatoms. ​

Diatoms are enigmatic, nor plant or animal, they share biochemical features of both. They are covered with complex silica structure and are responsible for creating 25-30 % of the oxygen present in the atmosphere of the Earth.

In the orbital laboratory, a sample of Marine Diatoms was subjected to Martian microgravity and zero-gravity conditions inside the Sojourner2020 microgravity payload. The diatomaceous strain Phaeodactylum Tricornutum, used in the experiment, can change between three possible morphotypes: oval, Fusiform, and triradiate. The project aimed to imagine a diatom based technology for oxygen production in space, but also to imagine what are the implications of an interplanetary ecology. Sojourner 2020 (a 1.5U size unit, 100mm x 100mm x 152.4mm ) will be launched into low Earth orbit for about 30 days. It features a three-layer telescoping structure which creates three different “gravities”: zero gravity, lunar gravity, and Martian gravity. Each layer of the structure rotates independently. The top layer remains still in weightlessness, while the middle and bottom layers spin at different speeds to produce centripetal accelerations that mimic lunar gravity and Martian gravity, respectively. Each layer carries 6 pockets that can hold projects. Source: https://www.guzmanluis.com/