The Controlled Closed-Ecosystem Development System (CCEDS) can be used to develop designs for sustainable, small-scale reproductions of subsets of the Earth’s biosphere and the Orbiting Modular Artificial-Gravity Spacecraft (OMAGS) that can be distributed both on and beyond Earth to improve quality of life, expand the diversity of life, study and protect life, and enable life to permanently extend beyond Earth.

An example of a sample CES with mammals and aquatic organisms.

The technology encompassing a CCEDS includes one or more Closed Ecological Systems (CES), each having one or more Controlled Ecosystem Modules (CESMs). Each CESM can have a biome containing at least one organism and equipment comprising one or more sensors, actuators, or components that are associated with the biome. A controller operates the equipment to effect transfer of material among CESMs to optimize one or more CESM biomes with respect to their organism population health, resilience, variety, quantities, biomass, and sustainability.

A CES is a community of organisms and their resources that persists in a sealed volume such that mass is not added or removed. The mass (food/air/water) required by the CES organisms is continually recycled from the mass (waste) produced by the organisms. Energy and information may be transferred to and from a CES.

CES research promises to become a significant resource for the resolution of global ecology problems that have thus far been experimentally inaccessible and may very well prove an invaluable resource for predicting the probable ecological consequences of anthropogenic materials on regional ecosystems.

To create CESs that are orders of magnitude smaller than the Earth that can function without the Earth, the desired gravity level and necessary radiation shielding must be provided by other means. OMAGS is a fractional gravity spacecraft design for CES payloads; in tandem, the CCEDS and OMAGS systems can be used to foster gravitational ecosystem research for developing sustainable communities in space and on Earth.

NASA is actively seeking licensees to commercialize this technology. Please contact NASA’s Licensing Concierge at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or call us at 202-358-7432 to initiate licensing discussions. Follow this link here  for more information.