Fig. 1: Approaches to in situ biomanufacturing (bio-ISM) depending on off-world mission-class.
From: Microbial biomanufacturing for space-exploration—what to take and when to make
The context-specific off-world mission-classes 1 to 4 are defined in (a), mapped as quadrants on qualitative spectra for the availability of in situ resources and logistic resupply. The most ubiquitous surface-accessible in situ resources for the Moon101 and Mars102 are compared in (b) in form of gases and solids, broken down into their molecular compositions (SNOPs: sulfur, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus. Note that SNOPs and mineral oxides exclude otherwise listed compounds. Compositions and amounts (where given) are rough estimates, based on current knowledge103,104,105,106. MMt: million metric tons). Biomanufacturing concepts-of-operations (CONOPS), outlined in (c), are color-coded for the operational mode: outgoing from initial cargo (black lines), CONOPS can rely on either loop-closure (LC, blue lines), in situ resource utilization (ISRU, orange lines), or both (LC+ISRU, green lines).
