Pioneer Labs

We engineer microbes for Mars.

Created: 2024-07-08

Updated: 2025-09-06

Classification

Miscellaneous

Category

Miscellaneous

Fields

Terraforming
Mars

Status

Early stage

First launch

Not announced

Short-term biomanufacturing
Our pioneer microbes will be used for green manufacturing in resource-constrained environments, both on Earth and in space.

Long-term terraforming
The properties of these engineered microbes will answer basic science questions about the limits of life and inform the feasibility, cost, timescale, and approach for someday terraforming Mars.

Biology is the ultimate green technology, capable of upcycling waste into food, water, and air: all the essentials for human life. However, today it is too unreliable, untested, and wasteful to be a mission-critical technology. That’s why we’re engineering hardy critters that perform gracefully even in the extreme conditions of space. By doing so, we aim to make biomanufacturing ubiquitous, reliable, and green — on Earth and beyond.

We are a nonprofit research organization based in San Francisco, California. We do moonshot marsshot science with an agile, startup-like team.