Swiss startup turns NASA-inspired Mars tech into jet crack detector

Mondaic, a Swiss startup spun off from ETH Zurich, has adapted wave physics software originally developed to study Mars’s interior for use in monitoring infrastructure safety on Earth. Founded in 2018 by Christian Boehm and colleagues, the company repurposed modeling tools from NASA’s InSight Mars mission to non-invasively detect hidden structural flaws such as cracks, voids, and water infiltration in bridges, pipelines, and aircraft parts. Their technology works by sending waves through solid objects and comparing the wave behavior to a precise digital twin model, enabling identification and localization of damage without drilling or cutting. Transitioning from a research tool to a practical product required making the software stable, user-friendly, and fully automated. Leveraging cloud computing, Mondaic’s platform now performs complex wave analyses rapidly and is accessible to infrastructure teams without specialized wave physics knowledge. The system is currently employed in collaboration with the Swiss Federal Roads Office to inspect bridges, detecting early signs of damage to enable timely maintenance. Beyond