Bioregenerative Life Support Systems (BLiSS)

For Artemis missions exceeding 120 days, NASA astronauts will need a completely regenerative life support system in Moon Base habitation modules. Traditional physical-chemical life support systems have over 40 years of use aboard International Space Station (ISS) and are ideal for short duration missions where hardware size and volume aren’t available. However, these systems are not regenerable, as constant resupply is required to maintain ISS through the resupply of nitrogen and oxygen (NORS), urine pretreat, water volumes, food (calories and nutrients), and food production (fertilizer, seeds). Nor are ISS physical-chemical systems sustainable as brine, fecal, and trash are either incinerated on reentry or returned to Earth - both of which are not possible on the Moon Base. NASA’s trade studies have demonstrated that a bioregenerative life support system (BLiSS) becomes more beneficial and cost effective for mission architectures exceeding 120 days. And the need for in-space biomanufacturing was recently published by NASA in the journal Space Policy: Biomanufacturing for a Lunar base—A sustainable vision for the future. The NASA 2023 Decadal Survey Thriving in Space also reconfirms the need for BLiSS, as the National Academies clearly stated that NASA needs to invest in bioregenerative life support and manufacturing in space (biomanufacturing and 3D printing).

Previous work in BLiSS has been performed by several Centers within the Agency through funding by the Mars Campaign Office (MCO), Advanced Exploration Systems (AES), Science Mission Directorate (SMD), and Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) programs. BLiSS has developed a series of bioreactors with the University of South Florida project that consume different waste streams as an alternate feedstock to produce various value-added products for supporting life. This approach improves logistics reduction by consuming waste, converts the waste into its basic elemental forms, and feeds those elements to microbes or plants to produce products needed for space flight. One reactor converts fecal waste into fertilizer for plants, while separate reactors convert wastewater into drinking water, another into oxygen, and a fourth into biomanufactured products like sugar, edible algae, and beta xanthan. Researchers at Texas Tech (TTU) and Johnson Space Center (JSC) have developed a urine treatment bioreactor, and researchers at ARC have developed small batch bioreactors for testing microorganisms in space. Through the Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) program, Pancopia was funded to develop a bioreactor to convert treated wastewater from the TTU bioreactor into nitrogen gas. Combining these efforts into a single BLiSS architecture would make a huge step forward in building a sustainable habitation bio-ECLSS (Environmental Control and Life Support System).

Under the Biological Wastewater Treatment for Exploration Resource Recovery (BioWaTERR) project, recent work has developed a deployable divergent wastewater wastewater treatment process for collecting human metabolic waste, transferring it to different processing reactors, and converting the wastewater into nutrient solution for plant growth and potable-like water. These reactors were combined into one deployable trailer for integration into the University of North Dakota's Integrated Lunar/Mars Analog Habitat (ILMAH). The trailer was attached to ILMAH on May 18, 2026 and will perform integrated testing with real human subjects in Summer 2026 through September 2028 funded by a NASA Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) grant. 

Bioregenerative Life Support is an enabling technology platform that integrates regenerable biological systems to convert waste streams into value-added products. This improves the logistics reduction of flight systems by converting waste into products for other habitation systems. The production of valuable resources from wastewater greatly reduces resupply needed to support habitation. Additionally, the product water can be used towards biomanufacturing products that can only be done in off-world habitats to create a sustainable Lunar/Martian economy.

This is early/mid-stage (TRL 5) — the most realistic path in is NASA SBIR/STTR, which funds small businesses and research institutions to develop technology aligned with NASA's needs (equity-free, phased funding). Check whether a current SBIR/STTR solicitation topic overlaps with this project's technology area, or contact the project directly (above) to ask.

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