There is a lot of fear about AI – but it might do wonders for our taste buds.

Around the world, major companies such as Mars are scrambling to use artificial intelligence to design better foods, with dozens of products already on sale. 

From sodas to alcohol and vegan food, firms want hope that AI‘s vast processing power will help invent recipes that we mere mortals have overlooked. 

Analyst Mordor Intelligence expects the market for AI in food production to grow to $35 billion worldwide by 2028.

AI Coke

Coca Cola has released a new Zero Sugar drink ‘co-created’ by human designers and AI which is designed to taste like a drink from the year 3000.

The limited edition Y3000 drink boasts that it is ‘futuristic flavoured’ and ‘designed by artificial intelligence’.

One TikToker said that the taste resembled stirring a normal Coke with a sugary lollipop and then drinking it.

The Y3000 limited edition is on sale now in the U.S. via Coca-Cola’s website. 

AI ice cream

Chinese ice cream maker Zhong Xue Gao used AI to design, market and create a new low-priced ice cream, launched in Shanghai in March.

The product is called “Sa’Saa”, which means “Satisfy And Surprise Any Adventure”, and comes in red bean, green bean, milk, and cocoa flavours.

The organisation used ChatGPT and the Chinese ‘Ernie’ AI chatbot to design and market the products.

The ice cream is not on sale in the West, but is currently on sale in China.  

Mystery meat stew

Not all AI experiments go to plan – and an AI chatbot designed by New Zealand chain Pak N’Save came out with recipes which involved cannibalism or deadly chlorine gas.

The app at first drew attention for unappetising recipes like an ‘Oreo vegetable stir fry’ – but then users found it would also recommend recipes with non-edible ingredients.

One, for ‘aromatic water mix’ which the bot described as ‘the perfect nonalcoholic beverage to quench your thirst and refresh your senses’ would release deadly chlorine gas.

The bot also offered recipes for poison and glue sandwiches – and human flesh stew which it described as ‘Mystery Meat Stew’.

AI designed vegan cheese

Chilean ‘food tech’ company Notco uses machine learning to create vegan versions of dairy and meat products – by analysing them at the molecular level.

The AI, known as Giuseppe, analyses the molecular structure of products and suggests ways to recreate them using plants.

The result is a partnership with Kraft, Kraft Heinz Not Company, which has released AI-designed cheese – Kraft NotCheese Slices.

Kraft NotCheese Slices are launching this year in the U.S. after trials.  

AI designed whisky

Swedish whisky company MackMyra worked with Finnish tech company Fourkind to design and AI whisky – processing information including recipes and customer feedback to create the ‘perfect’ whisky.

Using Microsoft’s Machine Learning Studio, the first ‘Intelligens’ whisky was launched in 202.

Not everyone is impressed though – blogger The Whisky Lady writes, ‘It’s probably a psychological bias, but you can almost feel it’s been computer-designed as it does lack personality.

The ‘Intelligens’ whisky is available now.  

AI beer

Billed as ‘the beer that made itself’ Becks Autonomous had a recipe designed by ChatGPT and a marketing campaign made by AI art software Midjourney.

ChatGPT came up with the entire concept with Beck’s marketing team asking for an idea to promote the beer’s 150th anniversary – and ChatGPT told them to brew a limited edition beer.

The limited-edition brew saw 450 cans going on sale in Europe with artwork and marketing materials designed by AI. 

 AI energy drink

Hungarian energy drink maker Hell turned to AI to design a new flavour and fed an AI sytem with information on sales, ingredients, health research and consumer feedback.

The AI came out with the tantalising sounding, ‘Tutti Frutti and Berry Blast’ flavour, which is launching in 60 countries worldwide this year.

The company believes that AI can usher in a ‘new era’ for the food insutry, reducing product development times from up to two years down to as little as a month.

The new Hell flavour is on sale now.  

It has been billed as NASA’s ‘asteroid autumn’ and involves a trio of exciting missions that could answer some truly mind-boggling questions.  

From offering clues to how life on Earth began, to unlocking the secrets of the solar system, key milestones for each voyage are due to play out over the next six weeks.

They include one rocket launch, a distant fly-by between Jupiter and Mars, and the recovery of ancient space rocks in the Utah desert that could contain the ingredients for life.

Of the three, the lift-off of NASA’s Psyche spacecraft probably sounds the most mundane — but no so fast.

That is also a fascinating mission, because it is setting off on a 2.5 billion-mile (4 billion-kilometre) journey to find out once and for all if a metal-rich asteroid really could bring down the world’s economy. 

1. Visit to $10,000 QUADRILLION space rock

Psyche is due to lift-off on October 5 on its way to the asteroid 16 Psyche, which scientists think may be packed full of precious metals with a value in excess of $10,000 quadrillion (£8,072 quadrillion).

Others dispute this and say it is just hard rock, but NASA should be able to tell either way when its orbiter gets to the asteroid in July 2029. 

One thing it definitely won’t look like is anything resembling what you might find in a jewellery store, however. 

‘I would love for it to look like a shiny, polished, what’s called a pallasite meteorite — with the shiny silver metal and the beautiful gold and green jewel-like silicate minerals in between,’ said Lindy Elkins-Tanton, the mission’s principal investigator.

‘But it’s not going to look like that. Because no one’s been onto Psyche, cut it open and polished it.’

She added: ‘It’s been hanging out in space, getting solar wind hitting it for a really, really long time. So the surfaces are not likely to be shiny.’

If 16 Psyche is in fact loaded with precious metals, it could be worth a huge amount of money, according to Dr Linda Elkins-Tanton, a space scientist at MIT. 

She has calculated that the iron in 16 Psyche alone would be worth $10,000 quadrillion (£8,072 quadrillion). 

Assuming the market for asteroid materials is on Earth, this could cause the value of precious metals to plummet, completely devaluing all holdings including those of governments, and all companies involved in mining, distributing and trading such commodities. 

Ultimately, it could lead to the collapse of the entire economy.

Of course it’s all speculative and hypothetical, because even if the space rock was worth anywhere close to that kind of money, it’s not like it could easily be brought back to Earth.

Engineers in California are currently getting the spacecraft ready to journey to 16 Psyche, which sits in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

The orbiter is due to piggy-back into space on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket which is scheduled to lift off from Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida no earlier than 10:38 ET (15:38 BST) on October 5. 

2. Recover sample from a 4.5 billion-year-old asteroid 

A separate team of NASA scientists is also gearing up to recover a capsule containing fragments of the asteroid Bennu.

The 8.8oz (250g) sample of rock and dust will be dropped back to Earth by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft and is due to land in Utah’s western desert on September 24.

An acronym for ‘Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer’, OSIRIS-REx became the first US mission to collect a sample from an asteroid when it briefly touched down on Bennu in October 2020 and scooped up material with its robotic arm. 

The space rock is about the size of the Empire State Building and around 200 million miles away from us.

It is of great interest to scientists because it is believed to contain microscopic mineral grains that pre-date the solar system.

This carbon-rich material is also thought to hold the preserved building blocks of life and could help experts better understand how the planets were formed and how life originated on Earth.

The sample that OSIRIS-REx recovered is the largest by a NASA mission since the Apollo astronauts returned with moon rocks in the 1960s and 70s.

It will be brought back to Earth and land at the Utah Test and Training Range in just over a week’s time. 

The precious rocks and dust will then be housed at a new lab at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, which is home to hundreds of pounds of lunar material collected by the 12 Apollo moonwalkers.

3. Fly-by on the way to Jupiter’s Trojans

Meanwhile, a spacecraft named Lucy – launched in October 2021 to study eight asteroids that orbit Jupiter – will pass its first space rock called Dinkinesh on November 1.

During its 12-year journey the probe will be the first to tour the so-called Trojan asteroids, which are seen as ‘time capsules from the birth of our solar system’. 

Although Lucy will get its first close-up look at a space rock in six weeks’ time, its maiden Trojan asteroid flyby will not happen for another four years, when the spacecraft gets closer to Jupiter in August 2027.

The vast majority of the asteroid visits will happen in 2027 and 2028, with a final asteroid flyby scheduled to happen in March 2033.

The first will take place in April 2025, when Lucy visits a space rock in the main asteroid belt beyond Mars known as Donaldjohanson. 

This will be followed by a trip to seven Trojan asteroids that are named after characters from Greek mythology.

They are Eurybates, Queta, Polymele, Leucus, Orus, Patroclus and Menoetius.  

All of the Trojans are thought to be abundant in dark carbon compounds.

Below an insulating blanket of dust, they are probably rich in water and other volatile substances, dating back to the first days of the solar system.

No other space mission in history has been launched to as many different destinations in independent orbits around our sun. Lucy will show us, for the first time, the diversity of the primordial bodies that built the planets. 

NASA has said the $981 million (£715 million) mission will revolutionise our knowledge of planetary origins and the formation of the solar system, giving insight into planetary evolution. 

It takes its name from the fossilised human ancestor, named ‘Lucy’ by her discovers, whose skeleton provided unique insights into our evolution. 

As well as viewing some of the oldest rocks in the solar system, Lucy’s path will cross the Earth three times, as it uses our planet’s gravity to aid in its positioning.

This move will make it the first ever spacecraft to return to Earth from the outer solar system, as all the others are either still going – in the case of the Viking probes – or burnt up in the atmosphere of a gas giant, as was the case with Cassini and Saturn.

With NASA aiming to return humans to the moon later this decade and perhaps send people to Mars in the 2030s, a lot of thought will have to go into how humans might survive long-distance space travel.

But what if the unthinkable happens and someone dies? 

In six decades of human spaceflight a total of 20 people have perished – 14 in NASA’s space shuttle tragedies of 1986 and 2003, three cosmonauts during the 1971 Soyuz 11 mission, and three astronauts in the Apollo 1 launch pad fire in 1967.

However, none of those were actually killed in space itself.

NASA does not have set protocols for dealing with death in space, but researchers around the world have put forward how such a tragedy could be dealt with.

First of all, it’s important to point out that there’s a number of ways space can kill you.

Chief among them is being exposed to the vacuum of space without a pressurised suit as protection, perhaps because of damage to the garment or some unexpected failure with a spacecraft that leaves an astronaut exposed to the cosmos. 

Canadian astronaut and former commander of the International Space Station (ISS) Chris Hadfield gives an example. 

‘In the worst case scenario, something happens during a spacewalk,’ he said.

‘You could suddenly be struck by a micro-meteorite, and there’s nothing you can do about that. 

‘It could puncture a hole in your suit, and within a few seconds you’re incapacitated.’

Being exposed to the vacuum of space would make it impossible for a person to breathe and would lead to the boiling of their blood and other bodily fluids, according to Emmanuel Urquieta, a professor of space medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine.

The astronaut would probably have just 15 seconds before they lost consciousness, making asphyxiation or decompression the most likely cause of death. 

That’s because in around 10 seconds the water in their skin and blood would vaporise, causing the body to expand like a balloon being filled with air and lead to the collapse of their lungs.

Within 30 seconds the astronaut would be paralysed, if not already dead.

Whether or not you held your breath would also make a difference to how quickly you perished.

If you did, the air in your lungs would expand, rupture your lungs, and kill you pretty quickly. If you didn’t, you could remain conscious for up to two minutes.

So if the worst happened, what would then happen to the body?

Well, it wouldn’t freeze instantly.

In a vacuum, the only way to lose heat is by the evaporation of fluid or by radiation, which happens very slowly for a relatively cool object like a human body.

Eventually, however, it would enter a frozen, mummified state where it would then sail through the cosmos for millions of years until it perhaps one day encountered another planet or star and was destroyed by the heat or radiation. 

What if your body could be recovered, however? 

Experts say it would likely be brought back to Earth if a death occurred on a short mission to places like the ISS or the moon.

But on a round trip to Mars that would not be immediately possible because a crew might be millions of miles away when it happened.

Instead, the body could possibly be frozen in the cold of space to reduce its weight and make it easier to store on its way back to our planet, according to Professor Christopher Newman and Professor Nick Caplan of Northumbria University.

Or it would have to be preserved in a specialised body bag, according to Professor Urquieta.

He said cremation would not be possible on the Red Planet because it ‘requires too much energy that the surviving crew needs for other purposes’.

Burial also isn’t an option because of bacteria and other organisms from the human remains could contaminate Mars. 

NASA actually has strict laws about contaminating other planets with Earth microbes, according to Catherine Conley of NASA’s Office of Planetary Protection.

She said they would all have to be killed, which brings cremation back into play, but the most likely outcome would be to preserve the body on the spacecraft until it could be brought back to Earth. 

So how would a death on Mars or the moon differ to it happening en-route to such a destination?

Well, it would be a very similar outcome if an astronaut had no spacesuit to protect them. 

That’s because our lunar satellite has almost no atmosphere at all and Mars a very thin one with next to no oxygen.

There’s also the danger of radiation.  

Previous data of the Red Plant suggests it is hit with 700 times the radiation experienced on Earth.

Radiation can alter the cardiovascular system, damaging the heart, harden and narrow arteries, or eliminate some of the cells in linings of the blood vessels, leading to cardiovascular disease and maybe end with death.

All of these factors will have to be considered if and when any future human mission to Mars is attempted.

For now, however, NASA is focusing on returning human boots to the moon by 2025 as part of its Artemis programme. 

Martian hunters are getting excited by cracked mud on the Red Planet.

A new paper suggests the same conditions that created the cracks could have been favorable to microbial life. 

Scientists aren’t certain how life began on Earth, but one prevailing theory says persistent cycles of wet and dry conditions on land helped assemble the complex chemical building blocks necessary to start life.

This is why a patchwork of well-preserved ancient mud cracks found by NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is exciting to the mission’s team.

The paper in Nature details how the distinctive hexagonal pattern of these mud cracks offers the first evidence of wet-dry cycles occurring on early Mars.

‘These particular mud cracks form when wet-dry conditions occur repeatedly – perhaps seasonally,’ said the paper’s lead author, William Rapin of France’s Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie.

Curiosity is gradually ascending the sedimentary layers of Mount Sharp, which stands 3 miles (5 kilometres) high in Gale Crater. 

The rover spotted the mud cracks in 2021 after drilling a sample from a rock target nicknamed ‘Pontours,’ found within a transitional zone between a clay-rich layer and one higher up that is enriched with salty minerals called sulfates. 

While clay minerals usually form in water, sulfates tend to form as water dries up.

The minerals prevalent in each area reflect different eras in Gale Crater’s history. The transitional zone between them offers a record of a period when long dry spells became prevalent and the lakes and rivers that once filled the crater began to recede.

As mud dries out, it shrinks and fractures into T-shaped junctions – which are what Curiosity discovered previously at ‘Old Soaker,’ a collection of mud cracks lower down on Mount Sharp.

Those junctions are evidence that Old Soaker’s mud formed and dried out once, while the recurring exposures to water that created the Pontours mud caused the T-shaped junctions to soften and become Y-shaped, eventually forming a hexagonal pattern.

The hexagonal cracks in the transitional zone kept forming even as new sediment was deposited, indicating that the wet-dry conditions continued over long periods of time. ChemCam, Curiosity’s precision laser instrument, confirmed a hardy crust of sulfates along the cracks’ edges, which isn’t too surprising given the proximity of the sulfate region. The salty crust is what made the mud cracks resistant to erosion, preserving them for billions of years.

‘This is the first tangible evidence we’ve seen that the ancient climate of Mars had such regular, Earth-like wet-dry cycles,’ Rapin said. ‘But even more important is that wet-dry cycles are helpful – maybe even required – for the molecular evolution that could lead to life.’

Although water is essential to life, a careful balance is needed – not too much water, not too little. The kinds of conditions that sustain microbial life – those that allow a long-lasting lake, for example – aren’t the same as the conditions scientists think are required to promote chemical reactions that might lead to life.

A key product of those chemical reactions are long chains of carbon-based molecules called polymers – including nucleic acids, molecules considered to be chemical buildings blocks of life as we know it.

Wet-dry cycles control the concentration of chemicals that feed the fundamental reactions leading to the formation of polymers.

‘This paper expands the kind of discoveries Curiosity has made,’ said the mission’s project scientist, Ashwin Vasavada of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. 

‘Over 11 years, we’ve found ample evidence that ancient Mars could have supported microbial life. Now, the mission has found evidence of conditions that may have promoted the origin of life, too.’

The discovery of the Pontours mud cracks may in fact have provided scientists their first opportunity to study the remains of life’s cauldron. Earth’s tectonic plates constantly recycle its surface, burying examples of its prebiotic history. Mars doesn’t have tectonic plates, so much older periods of the planet’s history have been preserved.

‘It’s pretty lucky of us to have a planet like Mars nearby that still holds a memory of the natural processes which may have led to life,’ Rapin said.

Curiosity was built by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed by Caltech in Pasadena, California. JPL leads the mission on behalf of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

Could a Yorkshire mine help solve the universe’s greatest mystery? British scientists want to build a giant particle detector 3,000ft below ground to pinpoint the source of dark matter

By Sam Tonkin

Updated: 07:26 EDT, 7 August 2023

The launch of an exciting mission that will confirm if an asteroid near Mars is worth an unimaginable amount of money is now just two months away.

NASA’s Psyche spacecraft has had its two jumbo solar arrays attached as engineers put the finishing touches on it ahead of its targeted October 5 lift-off date.

The orbiter is due to explore an asteroid called 16 Psyche which scientists think may be packed full of precious metals with a value in excess of $10,000 quadrillion (£8,072 quadrillion).

Others dispute this and say it is just hard rock, but NASA should be able to tell either way when its Psyche spacecraft gets to the asteroid in July 2029. 

Engineers in California are getting the orbiter ready to journey 2.5 billion miles (4 billion kilometres) to 16 Psyche, which sits in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

After passing a deployment test, Psyche’s twin solar array wings were re-stowed and will remain tucked away on the sides of the orbiter until the spacecraft leaves Earth. 

At 800 square feet (75 square metres), the five-panel, cross-shaped solar arrays are the largest ever deployed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. 

With the arrays unfurled in flight, the spacecraft will be about the size of a tennis court. 

Although they will produce more than 20 kilowatts of power when the spacecraft is near Earth, the solar arrays are primarily designed to work in the low light of deep space. 

The asteroid Psyche is so far from the sun that even these massive arrays will generate just over 2 kilowatts of power at that distance, which is only a little more power than a hair dryer uses.

Psyche is due to piggy-back into space on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket which is scheduled to lift off from Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida no earlier than 10:38 ET (15:38 BST) on October 5.  

NASA hopes that as well as establishing how metal-rich the object is, scientists will also be able to learn more about planetary cores and how planets form.  

The US space agency recently completed a test campaign of the probe’s flight software and installed it on the spacecraft, clearing the hurdle that kept Psyche from making its original 2022 launch date.

‘The team and I are now counting down the days to launch,’ Psyche’s project manager Henry Stone said last month.

‘Our focus has shifted to safely completing the final mechanical closeout of the spacecraft and preparing the team for operations. 

‘The team is conducting numerous training activities to ensure that we are prepared and ready. 

‘It’s a very busy time, but everyone is very excited and looking forward to the launch.’

Once it has escaped Earth’s gravity, the spacecraft will use solar electric propulsion to complete its six-year journey to the Psyche asteroid of the same name.

Scientists think the space rock, which measures about 173 miles (279 kilometres) at its widest point, may be part of a core of a planetesimal — the building block of an early planet. 

It could also provide a unique opportunity to study how planets like our own Earth formed.

Scientists believe that rocky planets have dense metal cores at the centre of the magma beneath their surfaces, but because these lie so far beneath the mantle and crust of such worlds, they’re difficult to measure and study directly.

Once NASA’s orbiter reaches 16 Psyche it will spend at least 26 months orbiting the asteroid.

While there, the spacecraft will take countless pictures and gather data that will tell scientists more about its history and what it is made of.  

They hope the information will include the asteroid’s topography, its gravitational properties, and the way different elements are distributed throughout the object.  

If 16 Psyche is in fact loaded with precious metals, it could be worth a huge amount of money, according to Dr Linda Elkins-Tanton, a space scientist at MIT. 

She has calculated that the iron in 16 Psyche alone would be worth $10,000 quadrillion (£8,072 quadrillion). 

Assuming the market for asteroid materials is on Earth, this could cause the value of precious metals to plummet, completely devaluing all holdings including those of governments, and all companies involved in mining, distributing and trading such commodities.  

Ultimately, it could lead to the collapse of the entire economy. 

Speaking to Global News Canada, Dr Elkins-Tanton said: ‘Even if we could grab a big metal piece and drag it back here … what would you do?

‘Could you kind of sit on it and hide it and control the global resource – kind of like diamonds are controlled corporately – and protect your market?

‘What if you decided you were going to bring it back and you were just going to solve the metal resource problems of humankind for all time? This is wild speculation obviously.’

The Psyche spacecraft has been described by engineers as being ‘slightly bigger than a Smart Car and about as tall as a regulation basketball hoop’, while if you include the solar panels that will power its movement, it is about as large as a tennis court. 

The mission has been in the phase known as assembly, test, and launch operations since March 2021. 

Luis Dominguez, the systems and electrical lead for assembly, test, and launch operations, said of the preparations: ‘We are moving forward and we’re confident that when we’re on the pad, we’ll be ready to hit the button. 

‘For all of us, we’ll be excited to launch this bird.’

A solar storm simultaneously hit Earth, the moon and Mars – the first time an eruption was measured on three planetary surfaces at once.

An international fleet of spacecraft detected the outburst, finding the particles were energetic enough to soar through Earth’s magnetic field that typically shields our planet from such events.

The solar storm pummeled the moon and Mars due to a lack of magnetic fields, which astronomers fear could be deadly for future human exploration.

Human beings are considering going back to the moon and eventually to Mars within the following decades. 

‘We are still facing one major hurdle, ‘space radiation,’ which is a significant and unavoidable risk for crews’ health, especially for long-term stays at future lunar or Martian stations,’ reads the study by scientists with the University of Science and Technology of China.

‘In particular, sporadic solar energetic particles (SEPs) generated via extreme solar eruptions may enhance the lunar or Martian surface radiation levels to potentially hazardous values.’

The solar storm was detected on October 28, 2021, but the scientists published their findings today.

The event was captured by the European Space Agency’s (ESA) ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO), NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) Moon lander, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), and German Aerospace Center’s (DLR) Eu:CROPIS Earth orbiter. 

The team stated that the event was an example of a rare ‘ground-level enhancement,’ which means particles released in the explosion are energetic enough to pass through the magnetic bubble surrounding Earth and protect us from less active solar outbursts.

This was only the 73rd ground-level enhancement since records began in the 1940s, and none have been recorded since – but still, the first time a solar storm has hit three planetary surfaces simultaneously. 

Since the moon and Mars are not protected in a ‘bubble’ like Earth, particles from the sun can interact with the soil to create secondary generation. 

However, Mars has a thin atmosphere that stops most lower-energy solar particles and slows down the highly energetic ones. 

ESA shared in a statement that ‘a radiation dose above 700 milligray – the unit for the absorption of radiation – may induce radiation sickness via destruction of the bone marrow, resulting in symptoms such as infection and internal bleeding.’

If an astronaut receives more than 10 gray, they are extremely unlikely to survive more than two weeks. 

The 2021 solar storm did not release enough radiation to harm astronauts in lunar orbit –  NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter clocked in just 31 milligray.

Scientist Jingnan Guo researched the solar event, said: ‘Our calculations of the past ground level enhancement events show that on average one event every 5.5 years may have exceeded the safe dose level on the moon if no radiation protection had been provided. Understanding these events is crucial for future crewed missions to the surface of the moon.’

The study shows ExoMars measured 9 milligray, 30 times more than the 0.3 milligray detected on the surface by the Curiosity rover.

ESA’s inner Solar System missions, Solar Orbiter, SOHO and BepiColombo, were also caught in the blast, providing even more vantage points to study this solar event.

Marco Pinto, an ESA research fellow working on radiation detectors, said: ‘We live in a golden age of Solar System physics. 

‘Radiation detectors aboard planetary missions such as BepiColombo, on its way to Mercury, and Juice, cruising to Jupiter, add a much-needed coverage to study the acceleration and propagation of solar energetic particles.’

From Interstellar to the Martian, human space exploration has been a key feature in science fiction blockbusters throughout the years. 

But what will human colonies in space look like in reality?  

Space experts claim human space exploration will begin with ‘technauts’ who build ‘gateways’ near Earth. 

These will help a small number of human explorers build colonies on the moon and then Mars, they say. 

To envision what these could look like, DailyMail.com used the popular AI art generator Midjourney to create images of what space colonies and spacecraft, based on these predictions.

Gateways near Earth

Human exploration will depend on ‘gateways’ and autonomous ‘ports’ in space which will ferry human explorers to Mars and beyond, says David Barnhart, CEO and founder of space company Arkisys.

Speaking to DailyMail.com, he said: ‘The future of human exploration will be grounded in how well we can setup the needed infrastructure, that is supply chains, housing, food stores etc.’

Just like on Earth, space will be explored by pioneers, who will set up the infrastructure needed for more people to follow, Barnhart believes.

He explained: ‘The way exploration on Earth occurred was over decades, but was almost always started by pioneers but then followed by creation of forts, towns, villages etc that could accept the needed goods/services to allow growth, and thus allow more humans to be transported.

Arkisys aims to build ‘The Port’ – an orbiting lighthouse and beacon which will serve travellers and spacecraft in Earth orbit, on the moon and on Mars and beyond.

Way stations to Mars

Barnhart says that human space exploration will rely on both ‘habitats’ and ‘space stations’ but also robotic ‘Ports’ which ferry cargo and vehicles.

Large antennas will also allow for constant communication to Martian habitats or habitats even deeper in the solar system.

Space station orbiting the Moon 

Barnhart said: ‘NASA’s initial concept for sustainable Moon habitats was the establishment of a “Gateway”, which was both to help the fuel and personnel transfer to/from the surface, but also served as a way station for possible Mars transport.

‘At the moment there are both Governmental and private push to develop different levels of infrastructure, from full scale space stations or habitats, to autonomous scaleable “Ports”.’

Barhart points out that Morgan Stanley has predicted that the space sector could be worth up to $1.1 trillion by 2040.

Asteroid mining

Asteroid mining ranks among the most potentially profitable industries, with Neil Degrasse Tyson suggesting that the first trillionaire will be an asteroid mining mogul.

Asterank measures the potential value of more than 6,000 asteroids tracked by NASA – and suggests that mining just 10 asteroids chosen for their proximity to Earth could net $1.5 trillion.

A single asteroid, 16 Psyche, is estimated to hold $700 quintillion of gold.

Manned lunar bases

Lunar bases and near-Earth space stations will be inhabited by ‘technauts’ who build the first infrastructure in space, said former NASA consultant Philip Robert Harris.

In his book Space Enterprise: Living and Working Offworld in the 21st Century, he writes: ‘Construction of space stations and lunar bases lay the groundwork of a space infrastructure for the next fifty years, leading to further space settlements, manned missions to Mars, mining of the asteroids and eventually to move human colonies orbiting in space or established on other planets.

‘Beginning with a handful of astronauts and cosmonauts, extending to space construction workers of technauts, the human population up there is likely to escalate during this millennium to thousands of spacefarers.’

In the book, former NASA expert David G Schrunk adds: ‘The moon is the logical place to establish the first offworld human settlement. It offers protection from space hazards and has energy (sunlight) and material resources that can be used to support human activities, and it is an excellent platform for scientific studies, especially astronomy.

Starship to Mars

Elon Musk has made various predictions about travel to Mars, with a suggestion last year that human travel to the red planet might be viable by 2029.

Musk hopes to use his reusable Starship rockets to bring costs down, with a fleet of Starships ‘shuttling’ between planets.

Advocates of Mars travel such as Robert Zubrin suggest that ‘travelling light’ could keep costs of exploring Mars to a minimum and exploring Mars could unlock not only mining opportunities but new technological breakthroughs.

Musk said: ‘In order for life to become multi-planetary, we’ll need maybe 1,000 ships, or something like that.’

Permanent base on Mars 

Musk believes that becoming a space-faring civilisation will help humanity avoid ‘filters’ where there’s a danger of extinction due to events such as nuclear war.

‘If we are able to make life self-sustaining on Mars, we will have passed one of the greatest filters. That then sets us up to become interstellar,’ he explained. 

‘Earth is around 4.5 billion years old, but life is still not multiplanetary and it is extremely uncertain how much time is left to become so.

‘Long term, it’s essential for preserving the light of consciousness. Eventually something will happen to Earth, hopefully not soon, either natural or man-made that would cause the end of civilization. The probable lifespan of civilization is much greater if we’re a multi-planet species.’

Hi-tech orbiters designed by AI

Future space habitats will be built from hi-tech materials using robotics and AI, says Vivek Koncherry, CEO of Graphene Space Habitat Limited based at the Graphene Engineering Innovation Centre at The University of Manchester.

Koncherry’s team has already produced 3D scale models of space habitats, and hopes to build a manufacturing unit to create space habitats.

The space habitat will use graphene-enhanced composites.

Koncherry told DailyMail.com, ‘Graphene is a fantastic solution as it is more lightweight than metals that have previously been used in space habitats, and it’s a very good conductor of heat, so can be used to dissipate heat in the warmest conditions.

‘We know our structures aren’t going to be perfect every time, but you can make an educated guess, make a small prototype and send it into space with sensors.

‘I’m not saying everything will work from day one – some of the components can and will fail. But if you want rapid research, the only way is to make something really fast, test it, get the data and learn from it.

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