Robin Wordsworth is the Gordon McKay Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering at Harvard University, where he leads the Planetary Climate and Habitability Research Group. His work bridges atmospheric physics, climate modeling, and planetary science to understand how Earth‑like worlds form, evolve, and sustain life. He is internationally recognized for pioneering studies of early Mars, exoplanet atmospheres, and the fundamental processes that govern climate stability across the solar system and beyond. His research has appeared in Nature, Science, PNAS, and leading AGU and AAS journals, shaping modern thinking on planetary habitability. Wordsworth earned his PhD from the University of Oxford and has received major awards including NSF CAREER. He is a frequent advisor to NASA missions and a leading voice in comparative planetology.

2026 CME NASA Symposium Abstract – Materials for sustainable habitats beyond Earth: Challenges and prospects

Despite over six decades of human spaceflight, how to sustain ecosystems for long-term life support beyond Earth remains a major unsolved challenge. Even with the most optimistic projections for launch cost decreases, use of in situ resources and simple approaches will be essential for system resilience and scalability, and innovative materials science will play a pivotal role. Here I focus on the potential for two classes of material – aerogels and biopolymers – for use in robust and scalable off-world life-support systems. The excellent thermal properties of aerogels allows them to buffer day-night temperature cycles and raise habitat interior temperatures by >50 K passively, giving them compelling advantages for use in habitats on Mars and potentially also the Moon. Biopolymers can be synthesized from in situ feedstocks in low-temperature bioreactors and open a path to bootstrapped life support systems with minimal mass and power requirements. Rigorous quantitative intercomparison of different off-world life support strategies requires an integrated view, which can be facilitated by adapting tools from the field of industrial ecology.