Cat Bohannon and Kelly Weinersmith with Selina Brown, Adam Rutherford and guests

Mars: humanity’s next moonshot? Or massive, expensive, ethically complicated suck pile? Let’s find out!

There’s a lot to be excited about on Mars, it’s true. But Teslas in Space aside, very few talk about what it really means to build a settlement on another planet: we’re asking female astronauts to give birth and raise babies on Mars. And we don’t entirely know what’s going to happen when they do. Some fantastic and weird new scientific research is starting to shed light on that problem–mostly by hurling pregnant rodents into space!–but a lot like the knowledge gap around women’s health here on Earth, we actually aren’t sure how those intrepid space frontierswomen will fare. We do know that Mars only has 38% of Earth’s gravity. We do know that radiation is bad. And we know that the human body has long evolved to live—and make babies!—on Earth. So what might it really look like to be pregnant, give birth, and nurse babies on Mars? And how can we help these poor women?

Bohannon’s Eve: How The Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution was Foyle’s Non-Fiction Book of the Year 2023, and Weinersmith’s A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through? won the 2024 Royal Society Science Book Prize. Join Cat and Kelly for a science comedy fashion show, where models and dancers will present new wearables on a hilarious science-focused catwalk. Each piece is designed in collaboration with Cat, Kelly, and a prominent feminist artist, using the latest cutting-edge scientific research to model what pregnant and postpartum bodies might really need to make it on Mars.

The wearables and artworks for Moms on Mars are conceived and created by a team of feminist artists and scientists including Cat, Kelly, Zach Weinersmith, Lucy McRae, Erika Moen, Jenna Woolf, Ani Liu, and Hazel Lee Santino.