Earth analog priors for deployable Mars habitats

Abstract Human exploration of Mars will require habitat morphologies that reduce long-term resupply and maintenance burdens under extreme environmental forcing, yet transferable geometric design laws remain poorly constrained. An explainable reverse-engineering framework is developed using refurbishment-phase embodied-carbon intensity as an Earth-analog proxy for maintenance-driven material replacement and logistics load. Across 59192 extreme-environment built habitats sampled from 384 cities, prefabrication-enabled benefits are quantified by absolute savings Δ and relative improvement η. Δ spans 0.211–3.942 kgCO2e m⁻³ (mean 1.874) and η spans 0.026–0.427 (mean 0.114), with weak coupling between national means (r = −0.154), indicating distinct drivers for absolute versus proportional gains. SHAP interaction topology reveals non-additive plateau/ridge/saddle optima, defining a narrow, mutually reinforcing proportion band (Shape Factor ≈ 1.01–1.06; Footprint Ratio ≈ 0.92–0.94; Aspect Ratio ≈ 0.93–0.96). Dual-objective screening yields a sparse non-dominated frontier ( n = 7) and a best-balanced solution (Δ = 4.02 kgCO2e m⁻³; η = 0.186), supporting a constrained, testable morphology-threshold law. A synthesis of 530 algorithm-driven extra-terrestrial habitat morphology studies (1981–2025) shows rapid post-2015 expansion and a shift toward deep/generative approaches, while a scan of 74 Mars-habitat R&D platforms across 19 countries indicates that most real-world efforts cluster at TRL 4–6, with high-maturity field sites dominating TRL 7–9. Together, these results connect a transferable geometric threshold corridor to the evolving algorithmic toolkit and current technology-maturity pathways for Mars habitat development.