Glimpses of history of artificial ecosystems’ creation

The article describes the documentary facts of artificial ecosystems’ creation designed for space and terrestrial applications. The study shows the pioneering role of K.E. Tsiolkovsky who was the first to develop the concept of closed ecological systems for people in space and the influence of V.I. Vernadsky’s biosphere works on the approaches to construct artificial ecosystems. The article presents the crucial contribution of S.P. Korolev to the first practical implementation of building the space habitat prototypes according to K.E. Tsiolkovsky’s projects. The article describes the major historical stages of this process that are such experiments as BIOS (the USSR), Biosphere 2 (the USA), CEEF (Japan), Mars-500 (Russia), Yuegong-1 (China).