Abstract:Plans to establish a sustained human presence on Mars have moved from speculative ambition toward concrete engineering programmes, making the biological consequences of settlement an increasingly practical question. A Mars colony would place a small, closed population in an environment combining chronic radiation, altered immunity, constrained medical autonomy, and engineered indoor air. Latent infections are especially important because clinically silent carriers may become sources of transmissible disease when host control deteriorates. In this study, we develop a stochastic host-radiation-pathogen-habitat model of latent tuberculosis reactivation in a Mars colony. The model links galactic cosmic radiation to immune competence, immune competence to latent-tuberculosis reactivation, and reactivation to airborne transmission in a closed habitat. We also formulate countermeasure allocation as a partially observable sequential decision problem in which isolation and medication are selected by fixed baselines or by a proximal policy optimization policy trained on an agent-based simulator. Our simulations show that active tuberculosis can emerge endogenously despite no initial infectious cases, and that risk is most sensitive to latent reservoir size, radiation-immune coupling and reactivation sensitivity. Adaptive control reduced infectious burden and mortality while limiting unnecessary intervention. This framework supports mission-specific stress testing of screening, monitoring, shielding and treatment strategies before launch.
From: Teddy Lazebnik Prof. [view email]
[v1]
Wed, 24 Jun 2026 11:49:40 UTC (1,827 KB)
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