Xavier De Kestelier discusses Hassell’s entry for NASA’s 3D Printing Centennial Challenge, a competition seeking perspectives from outside the traditional aerospace industry to explore how a human habitat could be designed and delivered on Mars using autonomous 3D printing technologies. Hassell’s entry for the competition was a design-led approach to an otherwise technical and engineering-focused task. For this, the firm – where De Kestelier is Head of Design Technology and Innovation – collaborated with a wide range of experts and scientists such as Mars meteorologists, space system engineers, space anthropologists and radiation experts. It also partnered with Eckersley O’Callaghan to design the external shell which could be constructed entirely by autonomous robots using Mars’ natural regolith.