By Sophia N. Silva

Project Overview

Being able to breathe is indispensable if we want to create life on the Red Planet and ensure the survival of the human species. With this autonomous robot that extracts oxygen out of CO2 while building the space settlements, we could revolutionize the space industry and start civilization on Mars without needing to spend billions of dollars in pressurized oxygen!

Interested? Just keep reading!

About Me

I’m Sophia, a high school student that is passionate about the possibility of creating a better future for the world. I’m from São Paulo, Brazil, and am excited about mathematics, astronomy, art, and social projects. I currently work as a volunteer on two projects. One helping low-income persons, like myself, learn English and the other helping immigrants getting their documents for free. In this program, I had the opportunity to gather my love for astronomy and art to create a product that hopefully will help the industry in the future.

The skills I learned throughout this project

Competencies

• 3D Modeling software (Blender and Sketchup).
• Simplifying analysis.
• Practicing agile.
• Measuring impact.
• Organizing presentation materials.
• Mind-map skill.
• System thinking.
• Root cause analysis

Mindsets

• I'm a constantly evolving work in progress.
• The more challenging the problem looks, the more you can learn from it.
• Not everything ends up perfect and that’s ok.
• You can change the world with the mechanism that you have.
• Being kind is the most important thing.
• Your inner self is as important as your grades.

Behaviors

• Composure (ability to deal with stress).
• If something’s not working, stop, breathe deep and take your time.
• Have an agenda for the things I have to do.

My learning journey

1. Engaging with the Challenge

In this first phase, I was introduced to the world of Future of Space Settlements.

As I looked into Moon colonization and Mars colonization, I jumped into some interesting things:

• Pros and cons to create human life on Mars. As examples of cons, I’ve learned about the difficulty of growing food on the Martian surface due to the alkaline soil that it has and the difficulty of breathing on Mars as its atmosphere is much thinner and it doesn't have oxygen. Those problems fascinated me as they are fundamental for the survival of humans outside Earth.
• I also learned the reasons why designing human space settlements could benefit our species. As examples of this topic, we have as its mainly ensuring the survival of our species. That is because Earth will die someday. I don't mean necessarily sustainable-wise, but cosmically. The Sun can overcome Earth, a random meteor could destroy us. The fact is, we won't have this Earth we call home forever. Therefore, having another place to go in case Earth is at risk is crucial for ensuring the survival of our species.