MESSIAH Managed Ecological System for Sustained ISRU Aligned Habitation A Closed Loop, Geometry Stabilized Food Production Architecture for Mars Surface Missions

MESSIAH (Modular Ecological System for Sustained In‑Situ Autonomous Habitation) is a comprehensive life‑support and habitat‑scale architecture designed to enable multi‑year human missions to Mars and deep‑space environments. This whitepaper presents an integrated framework that unifies food production, water recovery, waste processing, atmospheric management, environmental monitoring, and autonomous control into a coherent, closed‑loop ecological system capable of long‑duration operation with minimal resupply. The architecture emphasizes modularity, redundancy, and interoperability, allowing subsystems to be reconfigured, scaled, or replaced as mission needs evolve. MESSIAH outlines the governing physical, biological, and operational principles required to maintain environmental stability, microbial safety, and resource efficiency across extended mission timelines. The system incorporates crop growth modules, nutrient cycling pathways, potable‑water purification and recovery loops, and controlled‑environment agriculture designed to withstand the thermal, radiative, and operational constraints of deep‑space habitats. In addition to biological and chemical processes, MESSIAH integrates autonomous planning, scheduling, anomaly detection, and fault‑response capabilities to reduce crew workload and support Earth‑independent operations. Environmental sensors, microbial detection strategies, and trace‑contaminant monitoring are combined with predictive control algorithms to maintain safe atmospheric and water conditions without reliance on Earth‑based sample return. This whitepaper provides subsystem definitions, interface requirements, mass‑flow models, operational modes, and long‑duration performance considerations. It serves as a reference architecture for future habitat design, mission planning, and research into regenerative life‑support systems. MESSIAH is intended to support NASA, ESA, and commercial partners in developing scalable, resilient ecological systems that enable sustainable human presence beyond Earth.”