GAIA

Designed by Guido Baccaglini, Ameya Desai, Ria Barve, Alessandro Signorelli

Academic year

2025/2026

A large-scale mobile platform designed to support the agriculture of the future on Mars.

GAIA is a mobile platform conceived to guide the development of a self-sufficient agricultural ecosystem on Mars. The project imagines a vehicle capable of transporting, charging, and coordinating three CNH agricultural machines and two pollination drones, all operating autonomously through artificial intelligence. Its primary purpose is to support the creation of a vast seed bank and a closed agricultural cycle capable of producing essential resources and maintaining the biodiversity needed for early forms of life. GAIA becomes the connecting element between different technologies, offering a mobile structure that allows astronauts to move between habitats, maintain systems, and ensure operational continuity.

Within the network of interconnected biodomes, known as GAIANET, the agricultural machines prepare the soil, sow seeds, process enriched regolith, and manage crops, while the drones ensure pollination from above. The entire system works to convert organic waste into fertilizer, generate new seeds, and maintain biological variety in an initially sterile environment. GAIA coordinates these processes by providing dedicated areas for maintenance, energy, and logistics, becoming the central platform of Martian agricultural infrastructure and laying the groundwork for a colony capable of sustaining itself over time.