NASA’s Secret Ingredient
- 2 days ago
- 7 min read
The Artemis II astronauts heading back to Earth aboard the Orion spacecraft have travelled further into space than any humans in history. It’s a thrilling step towards the Artemis program’s ultimate goal of establishing a base on the Moon – and one day reaching Mars.
But to achieve this ambitious next step, NASA has a surprising ingredient up its sleeve. Some of the most exciting developments shaping our future beyond Earth are coming from experiments involving… mushrooms.
Yes, really! It might sound absurd, but the US space agency is actually exploring the idea of growing fungi-based habitats on the Moon.
Here’s my five-minute explainer on how these ancient and mysterious organisms could propel our civilisation to the stars. After that, some fungi facts that will leave you wondering how we ever considered leaving Earth without them.
Know your mushrooms
The premise of the video is quite literally out of this world. But there’s an equally interesting story to tell about the secret life of fungi much closer to home.
Before we get into that, though, what actually are fungi? If you mainly associate the word with mushroom toppings on a pizza, then read on.
Fungi are a category of organisms which includes yeast, mildews, moulds, and mushrooms. For thousands of years, people thought fungi were plants. Then in the late 1960s, scientists realised they were an entirely separate kingdom of life, that’s neither plant nor animal. (Fun fact: fungi are actually more closely related to humans than to plants.)
The main part of a fungus is a dense tangle of threads called mycelium. These underground roots can grow into huge and complex masses. Some of them produce fruiting bodies which we know as mushrooms.
To reproduce, fungi release billions of tiny cells called spores. These have negligible mass and are so resilient that they can survive in space, opening up the possibility that we could use them to produce building materials on the Moon and Mars.
Fungi can also enter into a symbiotic relationship with algae to form a hybrid organism known as lichen. Lichens are commonly found on tree trunks and rocks and play a vital role in ecosystems, helping to form soil and provide nutrients. This is why some consider them promising candidates for terraforming Mars – breaking down the Red Planet’s regolith (dust and rock) into something that could sustain life.
Five fascinating fungi facts
Even putting aside their potential to help humans sustain life in outer space, there’s a whole bunch of reasons to find our fungal friends fascinating.
1. Fungi made life on Earth possible.
Earth was once a volcanic wasteland with no soil, only rocks. Then, a few hundred million years ago, a fungus known as Tortobus arrived. Some believe it was the first organism to live on land. It soon started breaking down rocks to create the first primitive, nutrient-rich soils. Over millennia, fungi formed vast underground nutrient-sharing networks, enabling plants to take root and gradually transform the planet’s atmosphere. A once barren world was now teeming with complex life. Fungi also established the essential process of decomposition, breaking down dead organic matter and recycling the ingredients back into the ecosystem. As mycologist Paul Stamets explains: “We’re descendants of the descendants of these fungal networks.”
2. They can be huge.
If you could travel back in time 430 million years, you’d see forests of giant fungi – eight metres high by a metre wide – dominating the landscape as Earth’s largest terrestrial organisms. A lot has changed since, but one thing hasn’t – the biggest living thing we share the planet with is still a giant fungus. In a forest in the US state of Oregon resides the Humongous Fungus. It covers nearly 10 square kilometres, weighs a whopping 35,000 tonnes and is thought to be 2,000 years old.
3. Some fungi feed on radiation.
After the nuclear blast at Chernobyl in 1986, a 1,600 square-mile exclusion zone was established, which continues to be enforced to this day. The radiation decimated nearby forests, plants, and wildlife. (Good news: they have since made a significant recovery.) But one life form still seemed to thrive. Fungi were among the first living things to reappear in the abandoned radioactive wasteland. Not just in the exclusion zone or the power plant, but in the most radioactively contaminated place on Earth – the reactor itself. Perhaps this shouldn’t have been a surprise; a mushroom was the first thing to grow on the atomic bomb site in Hiroshima.
Not only do fungi thrive in radioactive conditions, but they also seem to “eat” radiation, meaning they could help clean up contaminated sites, and even act as a protective shield – including for astronauts in space.*
4. They can make magic materials.
As we look for more sustainable ways of building here on Earth, new construction techniques are already tapping into the unique properties of fungi. When grown into bricks, mycelium can be tougher than concrete or steel. It’s naturally fireproof and phenomenal at retaining heat – so much so that people living in Alaska are using it to insulate their homes.
A decade ago, an extraordinary-looking 12-metre cluster of towers constructed from 10,000 mycelium bricks stood at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. The prototype building, named Hy-Fi, was hailed for having “reinvented the brick” and served as a “testament to the possibilities of ‘low-tech biotech’ in architecture.” Mycotecture – using mycelium to grow building materials – hasn’t quite taken off yet, though. It’s still expensive and time-intensive; mixing and pouring concrete takes minutes, whereas mycelium bricks need weeks to grow.
If fungi-based construction is still a way off, there’s no such wait for fungi-based fabrics to go mainstream. From fashion designers like Stella McCartney to sports brands like Adidas and luxury car maker Mercedes, mycelium-based materials are now widely used as a sustainable alternative to leather. Not only is this more environmentally friendly to produce, but it also opens the door to an exciting potential superpower – researchers have found that, under the right conditions, mycelium leather can repair itself when damaged!
5. They may even be an alien life form!
Lichen – the symbiosis of fungi and algae – is well suited to life beyond the confines of planet Earth. In fact, it’s so well-suited that some scientists have speculatively asked: could this mysterious organism actually originate from space? One theory posits that it may have hitched a ride to Earth a few hundred million years ago on an asteroid. While the evidence for this wild idea is, let’s just say… yet to materialise, a 2005 European Space Agency mission did establish that lichen could survive a journey through space – withstanding long periods without oxygen or water, thriving on radiation, and weathering extreme heat and cold.
To boldly grow…
One fun guy (sorry…) has done more than anyone else to advance our understanding of these ancient and mysterious organisms. Paul Stamets is the world’s leading mycologist (a biologist specialising in fungi). I mentioned him in the section above, but if the name already sounded familiar, it may be because a character in Star Trek: Discoverywas named after him.
Stamets has spent his life studying fungi. “Beneath our feet lies a vast, invisible world that’s vital to life on Earth,” he writes. “These fungi form underground networks that nourish forests, store carbon, and support over 80% of plant life. Yet fewer than 10% of their biodiversity hotspots are protected.”
He describes mycelium – that vast underground network of fine fungal filaments – as “the Earth’s natural internet” and believes we may one day be able to communicate with them.
Millions have watched his TED Talk, 6 Ways Mushrooms Can Save the World. If you’re not yet one of them, I’d highly recommend taking a few minutes to let Stamets convince you of how fungi can save our lives, clean up pollution, restore forests, and provide sustainable fuel. You’ll never look at a mushroom the same way again.
Recommended links and further reading
NASA Advances Research to Grow Habitats in Space from Fungi(NASA)
The Secret Lives of Fungi (New Yorker)
Paul Stamets’ 2005 book Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save The World formed the basis of the popular TED Talk linked to above.
Merlin Sheldrake’s 2020 book Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds and Shape Our Futures.
The Netflix documentary Fantastic Fungi, which features Paul Stamets, explores the “magical, mysterious and medicinal world of fungi and their power to heal, sustain and contribute to the regeneration of life on Earth.”
In other news…
The four astronauts on NASA’s Artemis II mission are due to return to Earth in the early hours of Saturday (11th April), splashing down in the Pacific Ocean near San Diego, California, at around 1am UK time. The whole mission has been live-streamed. And, if you need a five-minute primer on the Artemis program, here’s the iluli video:
Social media – it really is designed to be addictive. At least that was the verdict of a landmark trial in Los Angeles last month, which awarded in favour of a 20-year-old woman suing Meta and Google for designing platforms that harmed her mental health. Several other similar lawsuits are expected to follow, and Meta and Google have said they intend to appeal. Here’s the iluli explainer on dopamine, and how certain tech products essentially hot-wire our neurons to keep us coming back for more:
* We’ll need to be careful though. Samples collected aboard the International Space Station revealed more than 30 different fungal species. As I mentioned in the video, this wasn’t a good thing. According to an academic paper’s summary of the results: “Several of those species were found to be opportunistic contaminants involved in the biodegradation of structural materials (polymers and metallic surfaces), affecting their integrity and leading to potential short circuits and malfunctioning.”
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