The future laboratory is an important new research infrastructure for the Humans on Mars initiative. Research performed there will enable groundbreaking extraterrestrial space research, while also driving the development of sustainable technologies for the Earth. The entire Mars laboratory will be completed in 2028, with individual modules and functions being usable as early as 2026.

By implementing the plans for the Mars laboratory, Bremen will have created a worldwide one-of-a-kind simulation environment for examining extreme environmental conditions and resource scarcity. The Mars laboratory will establish entire process chains and production facilities with the conditions found on Mars – a lack of breathable air and fossil fuels, limited water supplies, and a very limited number of workers. Examples of the planned processes include creating bio-plastics using the carbon dioxide of the atmosphere, and having small teams of humans and robots produce components to conserve resources.

“This approach helps us to not only meet the challenges on Mars, but also develop innovative solutions for the Earth,” says Professor Marc Avila, ZARM director and spokesperson for the Humans on Mars initiative. “The Mars laboratory is intended to drive innovation for the production of materials and components under the premise of extremely scarce resources. It is operated together with experts from materials science, production technology, and robotics and can also be used by scientists from other research institutes or industry to test processes under Martian conditions.”

The new Mars laboratory also forms one of the central research infrastructures for the Cluster of Excellence “The Mars Perspective: A Scarcity-Driven Engineering Paradigm.” The Cluster of Excellence application was successful in the first selection round of the highly competitive DFG funding strategy. If the final funding decision in May 2025 is also positive, an interdisciplinary consortium of 25 Bremen scientists will conduct innovative foundation research in the Mars Laboratory beginning on January 1, 2026.

Smart Living Lab: Smart Port of the Future

Bremen’s ports will also receive 2.8 million euros in funding. The EU is supporting a Smartport Living Lab, with which five research institutes from Bremen and Bremerhaven want to jointly develop innovative solutions for the digitized port of the future.
Bremen’s ports are facing a variety of challenges. In order to remain competitive, port processes must be digitized and automated. The Bremen port industry has been working with Bremen’s researchers for many years.
With the funding, researchers want to procure systems such as drones and walking robots for monitoring the condition of the port superstructure or an autonomous ship demonstrator. Intelligently networking these systems using a collaborative platform will optimize port processes and increase the safety and resilience of (digital) infrastructures in maritime logistics. To this end, the researchers want to apply for and work on projects together with the port industry so that they can put their scientific findings into practice as quickly as possible.

The project involves the Bremen research institutions Bremen Institute for Production and Logistics (BIBA), the Institute for Maritime Economics and Logistics (ISL), TOPAS Industrial Mathematics Innovation, the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), and the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Bremerhaven.
The Bremen institutes have been working together for many years in the Bremen Research Cluster for Dynamics in Logistics (LogDynamics) research network.

“One of our main topics is the digitization of maritime logistics,” says LogDynamics spokesperson Prof. Michael Freitag. Building on previous activities such as joint projects and a concept study on the Smartport of the future, the Smartport Living Lab will now build a laboratory infrastructure with innovative port technologies. “The pledge for funding comes at exactly the right time,” Friday continued, “because we have just started building our innovation community Smartport Transfer, which will receive 5 million euros in BMBF funding as part of DATIpilot. The new Smartport Living Lab will become an important building block of this community.”