Space Habitat Resilience: Integrating Neuroarchitecture for Indoor Living in Extreme Environment

Abstract

Moon and Mars mission architectures are shifting from short stays to longer surface stays in isolated, confined and extreme (ICE) conditions, where small crews live almost entirely inside pressurized habitats. As transit durations increase and lunar outposts evolve into more permanent bases, crews are exposed for longer periods to environmental hazards and non-terrestrial gravity that disrupt usual sensorimotor patterns. In this context, the habitat becomes the primary interface between human bodies and extreme environments, shaping how inhabitants perceive, move, orient themselves and sustain everyday rou- tines away from Earth. This article develops a neuroarchitecture integrative model for indoor living in lunar and Martian habitats, treating space habitat resilience as a cognitive and experiential property of the human–habitat system. The model connects advances in space architecture and planetary science research with person–environment theories to show how interior form and indoor environmental quality (IEQ) influence attention, emotional regulation and social functioning under confinement. It distinguishes a macro scale, where planetary constraints compress human experience into Built Environments in Extreme Environments (BEXEs), from a micro scale, where habitability is organized into four functional clusters (somatic, operational, psychosocial and ludic-recreational). Conventional IEQ assessment addresses a small set of generic dimensions applicable to any building; here, these are reorganized into twelve cluster-specific dimensions, three per cluster, calibrated for confinement and for the absence of an accessible exterior. Focusing on room shape and proportions, degrees of enclosure and visual order as key interior variables, the model positions the habitat as an active co-regulator of cognition and argues for design agendas that move beyond minimum safety and volume standards toward evidence-informed cognitive habitability in emerging off-Earth settlements.