A startup, Spaceborn United, wants to reach the goal of having a baby naturally conceived and born on Mars in the future.
If humans intend to conquer the stars and spread civilization beyond Earth, we really need to figure out sex: can humans conceive and have babies in places such as Mars, where factors like high amounts of radiation and lower gravity could wreck the adult body, nevermind potentially hindering natural conception and deforming growing fetuses?
A growing number of researchers and entrepreneurs want to tackle those questions. Take this startup called Spaceborn United, which we’ve blogged about previously.
The company is still hard at work, according to new reporting from AFP, with the aim of having a baby naturally conceived and born on Mars in the future.
« If you want to have independent human settlements beyond Earth, and if you really want them to be independent, you also need to address the reproductive challenge, » Dutch entrepreneur and Spaceborn head Egbert Edelbroek told the news agency. « It’s important that the Earth and humanity can become a multiplanetary species. »
As a start, Spaceborn has developed a miniature IVF-like device that fertilizes the ovum and grows the resultant embryo while the device spins in order to replicate gravity on Earth.
