In the original Ad Astra landings, the very first fully fledged building on Mars was a solar panel array secured to Martian regolith. These arrays were more primitive than the ones we have now but were capable of securing an efficiency rating of 29.5%. The Ad Astra Development Zone is famous for its vast solar panel array farms that stretch out to the horizon, all used in efforts to power the city.

Duskwork's are more efficient than the ones originally used in the landings but they'll be your main source of power. They take in standardized power cells into their slots and are able to charge them fairly quickly.

Power is needed for everything we do on Mars. Likelihood is, you have several empty power cells in your inventory. You might be wondering what to do with them. Your Solar Panel is going to be your best friend.

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Water Filters are incredibly useful on the Martian surface, with large water filtration plants supplying the massive greenhouses and life support systems all across the sister planet. During Ad Astra's first few landings, they were pivotal in the creation of Hydrogen and Oxygen which are nessecary for the construction of many important resources even prior to the humans arrival.

Now, using independent Duskworks Water Filtration system they can be used to ferment seeds and drain water from the massive glacial caps on the planet's poles and hidden underground. They work largely similar to any water filtration system you might be used to, processes like reverse osmosis or industrial filters used to sift all the micro-dust and junk off of extracted ice.

Water filters have three uses: filtering Water, fermenting Coffee Beans and fermenting Sorghum. Let's walk through each of these processes so we can fully understand how Water Filter works.

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Let's first ferment some coffee beans. As always, make you sure have the right resources.

• 1 Stamina

• 26 Coffee Cherry

• 10 Power

Click CONFIRM if you'd like to do the job yourself or click on POST WORK ORDER to have someone else do it for you for a fee.

I'll receive a number of coffee beans once that task has completed.

Next, let's filter some water. Click on the "FILTER WATER" button

Once again make sure you have the following resources

• 1 Stamina

• 40 Ice

• 10 Power

Hit that CONFIRM button, give it some time and enjoy some nice tasty Mars water!

Greenhouses are used to grow food. They are essential in any homestead being operated on Mars, be it the vast acre wide farmlands of Ad Astra Development Zone or the smaller more independent greenhouses operated by Duskworks.

Why do we need to grow food instead of just shipping it to Mars? Food is heavy, and growing it on the planet itself means we don't have to rely on our sister planet to keep our colonies alive. While greenhouse buildings themselves may be easier to construct due to the lower atmospheric pressure, plants will have a harder time staying alive as they have a harder time handling hypobaria. https://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/livingthings/25feb_greenhouses.html

For Duskwork's Greenhouses you'll need to supply them with filtered water, stored power, and soil, along with seeds.

The first greenhouses on the Martian surface used small aeroponic farms, but when the Metis Shield advanced further and traditional farming techniques became cheaper than large complex aeroponics fields, most greenhouses moved to soil-based growing. Some aeroponic fields still exist near the center of the Ad Astra Development Zone. Tourism is quite popular in these old aeroponics labs.

You can get seeds from several sources in the game, including Seed Packs, Scavenging, and the in-game marketplace.

You will need a higher level greenhouse in order to grow the higher quality crops.

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Let's take a look at a couple of these recipes so you can see how it works.

All the recipes in the greenhouses follow the same process, we just need different resources. First thing you are going to notice is the "FILL IRRIGATION" button.

On top of needing power like any other building, the greenhouse also needs water. You can see the water storage specification above the power storage one.

In the example below, I'm filling up my greenhouse with water only once. This takes 20 Water. Of course, you can irrigate your greenhouse with water more than once. You can adjust the counter to the number of irrigation you would like to do.

Below, you see that the water storage is now 20/250! Let's keep irrigating until we reach 240/250

Remember to fill up the power as you would just like any other building!

Now that the greenhouse is filled with water and charged with power, let's plant some carrots! Click on the "PLANT CARROT" button and make sure you have the following resources:

• 3 Stamina

• 20 Water (in the storage)

• 14 Power

• 1 Carrot Seed

• 4 Soil

Click CONFIRM and give the greenhouse some time.

While we wait for those carrots to grow! let's plant some coffee as well! Click on the "PLANT COFFEE" button and make sure once again you have the following resources.

• 1 Stamnia

• 16 Water (In the storage)

• 20 Power

• 1 Coffee Seed

• 5 Soil

Click CONFIRM and let the greenhouse do it's magic!

Shall we plant lettuce while we wait for the coffee and the carrots to be ready to harvest?

Click on the "PLANT LETTUCE" button, and make sure you have the following resources

• 2 Stamina

• 12 Water (In the storage)

• 5 Power

• 1 Lettuce Seed

• 3 Soil

Click CONFIRM, and let the greenhouse do its work! Now that we planted all 3 of our crops! Let's wait some time and come back and harvest them all. Each of these produce items will take different number of hours to be ready and each gives us a different food amount.

One of the most important buildings that help in the sustainability of any colony on Mars, much like the greenhouses, the C.A.D. It is also sometimes known as the very wordy Cryo Atmosphere Distiller. The cryogenic distillation process specializes in capturing Carbon Dioxide from the Martian atmosphere by pulling in air from an air intake and compressing the air then further cooling and distilling it down for transportation. For further reading: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/cryogenic-distillation

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