Space agencies and researchers are turning to biology to create spacecraft that adapt like living creatures to survive future missions. Going interstellar is hard. The closest stars to the sun are generally several light-years away, so a trip would take decades at best. Not to mention that the road there is perilous: Particle impacts and radiation can easily destroy a mission on its way there. Angelo Vermeulen, however, likes hard problems. He has imagined a spacecraft dug into an asteroid, which evolves like an organism and could take us beyond the solar system. The best part? Vermeulen’s project isn’t science fiction but actual scientific research he’s pursuing at the Technical University of Delft in the Netherlands, where he is preparing a computer simulation for the proposed starship. And he isn’t alone. As more countries shoot for the moon and do-it-yourself groups help democratize outer space, the world’s top space agencies and major research universities are going one step further, increasingly turning to adaptive, biomimetic and evolutionary-inspired designs for space exploration. Bio-inspired design, scientists believe, can allow us to design more efficiently and react better to unforeseen problems. That adaptability, experts say, will be key in pushing farther out from Earth. | 