Chrysalis, a 58-kilometer generational starship designed to carry humanity beyond the solar system, won the 2025 Project Hyperion Design Competition. The Initiative for Interstellar Studies (i4is) announced the jury’s decision in July 2025, and published the results in early August. The all-Italian design team comprises Giacomo Infelise, Veronica Magli, Guido Sbrogio, Nevenka Martinello, and Federica Chiara Serpe. Chrysalis proposes a self-sustaining city for interstellar migration, but remains a conceptual study, not an approved spacecraft program.
The proposed cylindrical vessel is approximately 58,000 meters long and 6,000 meters in diameter, with an estimated mass of 2.4 billion metric tonnes. It is designed for a normal population of about 1,500, with capacity for nearly 2,400 people. Its conceptual construction schedule is estimated at two to two and a half decades. This is not a funded or authorized project timetable. The modular structure, highlighted by the competition jury, is organized around a basic basic and concentric layers for housing, healthcare, education, agriculture, industry, and recreation.
Life Inside Chrysalis
Chrysalis is conceived as a rotating habitat, with its modules spinning to generate artificial gravity. Residents would have access to homes, schools, hospitals, libraries, parks, factories, and warehouses. The design prioritizes closed-loop ecological systems, handling food production, oxygen generation, water recycling, and waste management internally. Automated systems and robots would manage much of the industrial and logistical workload. The proposed Direct Fusion Lead, which uses deuterium and helium-3, is intended to provide propulsion. The architecture has not been validated at the scale required for the mission.
The design places strong emphasis on self-sufficiency. Every aspect of life, from growing crops to maintaining technical systems, would need to be managed on board, with spare parts manufactured in situ and knowledge preserved across generations. Its layered structure is also intended to protect residents from cosmic radiation, interstellar dust, and micrometeoroids. Food, water, oxygen, medical care, manufacturing, and education would all have to function reliably without outside support for centuries.
The 400-Year Journey
Chrysalis is intended to travel to Proxima Centauri b, an exoplanet approximately 4.2 light-years from Earth. The journey is projected to take about 400 years, meaning the original crew would not reach the destination. Their descendants would inherit the mission, living and dying aboard the ship as it crosses interstellar space. Education, healthcare, and the preservation of technical knowledge would be central to maintaining a stable society across generations.
Proxima Centauri b orbits an active red dwarf and lies in or near its star’s habitable zone, but that location alone does not establish that it can support life. Its atmosphere, surface conditions, and the presence of liquid water remain uncertain. Stellar flares and possible atmospheric loss are also impressive considerations for any future settlement. NASA studies exoplanets, including worlds relevant to this broader field, but Chrysalis is not a NASA mission. It is a Project Hyperion competition concept developed under the auspices of the Initiative for Interstellar Studies.
Technological and Human Challenges
Building Chrysalis would require major advances in propulsion, closed ecological systems, and shielding against space hazards. No operational fusion reactor currently exists to power a vessel of this scale, and the proposed propulsion and life-support systems have not been demonstrated as an integrated system capable of lasting centuries. Manufacturing replacement parts on board, keeping food and water cycles stable, and protecting residents from radiation would all be impressive. Governance, mental health, education, and population management would be equally impressive to the survival of a multigenerational community.
The project’s designers propose establishing a community in Antarctica for several decades before launch to simulate isolation and study the cultural adaptation required for life aboard Chrysalis. The preparatory phase would aim to develop social norms and ability to recover for a multigenerational journey through deep space.
Chrysalis is neither a construction project nor a near-term plan for leaving Earth. Its value lies in treating an interstellar vessel as a durable human settlement rather than simply a vehicle: a speculative systems-engineering study that brings together population planning, artificial gravity, agriculture, manufacturing, ecological management, and long-term governance. Any mission would also depend on learning far more about Proxima Centauri b before deciding whether it could be a destination for human settlement.
