Twenty-five out of a hundred teams from around the world have qualified for the semi-final of the Mars Society's competition for a design of a Martian base fit to accommodate a thousand people. The semi-finalists include as many as two groups of students from Wrocław University of Science and Technology

The following projects have a chance to enter the final:  "Ideacity" - a brainchild of the students Justyna Pelc, Beata Suścicka, Magdalena Kubajewska, Piotr Torchała, and Andrzej Reinke, and "Twardowsky" -  a result of cooperation between MSc and PhD students involved in the Space is More and Scorpio initiatives, with the help of several members of the MOS Scientific Circle and the LabDigiFab initiative.

Among the semi-finalists are teams from the USA, Great Britain, Japan, Poland, France, Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, and Israel,  all of which will be invited to prepare descriptions of their projects, to be published in the book entitled "Mars Colonies:  Plans for Settling the Red Planet".

The projects submitted to the competition were divided into five groups of 20. Two judges were assigned to each of them to analyse the proposed solutions. The Semi-finalists comprise the best teams from each of these groups.

The projects qualified for the semi-final will be examined by all the judges to select from eight to ten finalists of the competition, who will then be invited to the Mars Society Convention organised in October at the University of Southern California.

The list of all semi-finalists is available on the website of the competition organiser - Mars Society.