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sunaleisocial · 2 months ago

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Construction Technology for Moon and Mars Exploration

New Post has been published on https://sunalei.org/news/construction-technology-for-moon-and-mars-exploration/

Construction Technology for Moon and Mars Exploration

One of the keys to a sustainable human presence on distant worlds is using local, or in-situ, resources which includes building materials for infrastructure such as habitats, radiation shielding, roads, and rocket launch and landing pads. NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate is leveraging its portfolio of programs and industry opportunities to develop in-situ, resource capabilities to help future Moon and Mars explorers build what they need. These technologies have made exciting progress for space applications as well as some impacts right here on Earth.

The Moon to Mars Planetary Autonomous Construction Technology (MMPACT) project, funded by NASA’s Game Changing Development program and managed at the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, is exploring applications of large-scale, robotic 3D printing technology for construction on other planets. It sounds like the stuff of science fiction, but demonstrations using simulated lunar and Martian surface material, known as regolith, show the concept could become reality.

With its partners in industry and academic institutions, MMPACT is developing processing technologies for lunar and Martian construction materials. The binders for these materials, including water, could be extracted from the local regolith to reduce launch mass. The regolith itself is used as the aggregate, or granular material, for these concretes. NASA has evaluated these materials for decades, initially working with large-scale 3D printing pioneer, Dr. Behrokh Khoshnevis, a professor of civil, environmental and astronautical engineering at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

Khoshnevis developed techniques for large-scale extraterrestrial 3D printing under the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program. One of these processes is Contour Crafting, in which molten regolith and a binding agent are extruded from a nozzle to create infrastructure layer by layer. The process can be used to autonomously build monolithic structures like radiation shielding and rocket landing pads.

Continuing to work with the NIAC program, Khoshnevis also developed a 3D printing method called selective separation sintering, in which heat and pressure are applied to layers of powder to produce metallic, ceramic, or composite objects which could produce small-scale, more-precise hardware. This energy-efficient technique can be used on planetary surfaces as well as in microgravity environments like space stations to produce items including interlocking tiles and replacement parts.

While NASA’s efforts are ultimately aimed at developing technologies capable of building a sustainable human presence on other worlds, Khoshnevis is also setting his sights closer to home. He has created a company called Contour Crafting Corporation that will use 3D printing techniques advanced with NIAC funding to fabricate housing and other infrastructure here on Earth.

Another one of NASA’s partners in additive manufacturing, ICON of Austin, Texas, is doing the same, using 3D printing techniques for home construction on Earth, with robotics, software, and advanced material.

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Construction is complete on a 3D-printed, 1,700-square-foot habitat that will simulate the challenges of a mission to Mars at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. The habitat will be home to four intrepid crew members for a one-year Crew Health and Performance Analog, or CHAPEA, mission. The first of three missions begins in the summer of 2023.

The ICON company was among the participants in NASA’s 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge, which aimed to advance the technology needed to build housing in extraterrestrial environments. In 2021, ICON used its large-scale 3D printing system to build a 1,700 square-foot simulated Martian habitat that includes crew quarters, workstations and common lounge and food preparation areas. This habitat prototype, called Mars Dune Alpha, is part of NASA’s ongoing Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog, a series of Mars surface mission simulations scheduled through 2026 at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

With support from NASA’s Small Business Innovation Research program, ICON is also developing an Olympus construction system, which is designed to use local resources on the Moon and Mars as building materials.

The ICON company uses a robotic 3D printing technique called Laser Vitreous Multi-material Transformation, in which high-powered lasers melt local surface materials, or regolith, that then solidify to form strong, ceramic-like structures. Regolith can similarly be transformed to create infrastructure capable of withstanding environmental hazards like corrosive lunar dust, as well as radiation and temperature extremes.

The company is also characterizing the gravity-dependent properties of simulated lunar regolith in an experiment called Duneflow, which flew aboard a Blue Origin reusable suborbital rocket system through NASA’s Flight Opportunities program in February 2025. During that flight test, the vehicle simulated lunar gravity for approximately two minutes, enabling ICON and researchers from NASA to compare the behavior of simulant against real regolith obtained from the Moon during an Apollo mission.

Learn more: https://www.nasa.gov/space-technology-mission-directorate/

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spacenutspod · 2 years ago

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5 min readPreparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) By Jessica Barnett For many at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, a love – be it for space, science, or something else – drew them to the career they’re in today. For geologist Jennifer Edmunson, there were multiple reasons. Her love for geology dates back to her childhood in Arizona, playing in the mud, fascinated by the green river rocks she would find and how they fit together. As she grew older, her love for astronomy led her to study the regolith and geology of the Moon and Mars in graduate school. Jennifer Edmunson, geologist and MMPACT project manager at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. NASA That, in turn, led her to Marshall for her post-doctorate, where she studied how shock processes from meteorite impacts potentially affect scientists’ work to determine the age of rocks using different radioisotope systems. On her first day, she needed help from the center’s IT department, which is how she met Joel Miller, the man she now calls her husband. “I met him on April Fools’ Day, and he asked me out on Friday the 13th,” Edmunson recalled. “I knew I needed to get a stable job, so I got a job as the junior geologist on the simulant team here at Marshall. That was back in 2009.” Fourteen years later, they still work at Marshall. He’s now the center’s acting spectrum manager, and she manages the MMPACT (Moon-to-Mars Planetary Autonomous Construction Technology) project. Through MMPACT, Marshall is working with commercial partners and academia to develop and test robotic technology that will one day use lunar soil and 3-D printing technology to build structures on the Moon. “It’s phenomenal to see the development of the different materials we’ve been working on,” Edmunson said. “We started with this whole array of materials, and now we’re like, ‘OK, what’s the best one for our proof of concept?’” NASA aims for a proof-of-concept mission to validate the technology and capability by the end of this decade. This mission would involve traveling to the Moon to create a representative element of a landing pad. Marshall geologist and MMPACT project manager Jennifer Edmunson, fourth from right, joined several other scientists for a trip to Stillwater, Montana, earlier this year. Stillwater is known to have rocks like those found on the Moon. MMPACT aims to build lunar infrastructure using the materials readily available on the Moon. This process, known as in-situ resource utilization, allows NASA engineers to use lunar regolith, fine-grained silicate minerals thought to be available in a layer between 10 to 70 feet deep on the lunar surface, to build different structures and infrastructure elements. However, regolith can’t be used like cement here on Earth, as it wouldn’t solidify in the low-pressure environment. So, Edmunson and her team are now looking at microwaves and laser technology to heat the regolith to create solid building materials. After successfully building a full-scale landing pad on the Moon, MMPACT will likely focus on a vertical structure, like a garage, habitat, or safe haven for astronauts. “The possibilities are endless,” she said. “There is so much potential for using different materials for different applications. There’s just a wealth of opportunity for anyone who wants to play in the field, really.” Edmunson hopes to get more lunar regolith first, as NASA is still working with samples from the Apollo missions and simulants based on those samples. She’s also looking forward to Artemis bringing back samples from different parts of the lunar surface because it will provide her team with a wider pool of regolith samples to analyze. “We want to learn more about different locations on the Moon,” she said. “We have to understand the differences and how that might affect our processes.” Knowing this will make it easier not just to build landing pads and habitats but to build roadways and the start of a lunar economy, Edmunson said. “I want there to be sufficient structures there to make things safe for crew, so if we want to build a hotel on the Moon, we could,” she said. “We could have tourists going there, mining districts pulling rare Earth elements from the Moon. We could do that and get a lot of resources that way. Some minerals are rare on Earth but abundant on the Moon. To study how those minerals could be used for building, scientists rely on simulants, like the synthetic anorthite pictured here. NASA “I want science to progress, things like building a radio telescope on the far side of the Moon. I want more information on more of the different sites around the Moon, so we can get a better understanding of how the Moon formed and the history of the Moon. We’ve only scratched the surface there.” There are parts of the Moon that can only be explored in detail by visiting in person, Edmunson explained, and she’s excited to be working at Marshall as that exploration is made possible. “It’s awesome to be part of this. Honestly, it’s the reason I get out of bed in the morning,” she said. “I was born in ’77, so I missed the Apollo lunar landings. I would love to see humans on the Moon in my lifetime, and on Mars would just be amazing.” Her advice is simple to anyone considering a career like hers: Just go for it. “A lot of it comes down to passion and tenacity,” she said. “If you really love what you do and you get to do it every day, you find more enjoyment in your career. I feel like I’m making a difference, and with surface construction at such an infant kind of stage right now, I feel like it’s a contribution that will last for a very long time.” Ramon J. OsorioMarshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, [email protected] Share Details Last Updated Dec 13, 2023 EditorBeth RidgewayLocationMarshall Space Flight Center Related TermsMarshall Space Flight Center Explore More 16 min read The Marshall Star for December 13, 2023 Article 2 days ago 3 min read NASA Stennis Continues Preparations for Future Artemis Testing Article 2 days ago 5 min read NASA’s IXPE Marks Two Years of Groundbreaking X-ray Astronomy Article 7 days ago Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASA Missions Humans in Space Climate Change Solar System

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tastydregs · 2 years ago

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How NASA Plans to Melt the Moon—and Build on Mars

In June a four-person crew will enter a hangar at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, and spend one year inside a 3D printed building. Made of a slurry that—before it dried—looked like neatly laid lines of soft-serve ice cream, Mars Dune Alpha has crew quarters, shared living space, and dedicated areas for administering medical care and growing food. The 1,700-square-foot space, which is the color of Martian soil, was designed by architecture firm BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group and 3D printed by Icon Technology.

Experiments inside the structure will focus on the physical and behavioral health challenges people will encounter during long-term residencies in space. But it’s also the first structure built for a NASA mission by the Moon to Mars Planetary Autonomous Construction Technology (MMPACT) team, which is preparing now for the first construction projects on a planetary body beyond Earth.

When humanity returns to the moon as part of NASA’s Artemis program, astronauts will first live in places like an orbiting space station, on a lunar lander, or in inflatable surface habitats. But the MMPACT team is preparing for the construction of sustainable, long-lasting structures. To avoid the high cost of shipping material from Earth, which would require massive rockets and fuel expenditures, that means using the regolith that’s already there, turning it into a paste that can be 3D printed into thin layers or different shapes.

The team’s first off-planet project is tentatively scheduled for late 2027. For that mission, a robotic arm with an excavator, which will be attached to the side of a lunar lander, will sort and stack regolith, says principal investigator Corky Clinton. Subsequent missions will focus on using semiautonomous excavators and other machines to build living quarters, roads, greenhouses, power plants, and blast shields that will surround rocket launch pads.

The first step toward 3D printing on the moon will involve using lasers or microwaves to melt regolith, says MMPACT team lead Jennifer Edmunson. Then it must cool to allow gasses to escape; failure to do so can leave the material riddled with holes like a sponge. The material can then be printed into desired shapes. How to assemble finished pieces is still being decided. To keep astronauts out of harm’s way, Edmunson says the goal is to make construction as autonomous as possible, but she adds, “I can’t rule out the use of humans to maintain and repair our full-scale equipment in the future.”

One of the challenges the team faces now is how to make the lunar regolith into a building material strong enough and durable enough to protect human life. For one thing, since future Artemis missions will be near the moon’s south pole, the regolith could contain ice. And for another, it’s not as if NASA has mounds of real moon dust and rocks to experiment with—just samples from the Apollo 16 mission.

So the MMPACT team has to make their own synthetic versions.

Edmunson keeps buckets in her office of about a dozen combinations of what NASA expects to find on the moon. The recipes include varying mixtures of basalt, calcium, iron, magnesium, and a mineral named anorthite that doesn’t occur naturally on Earth. Edmunson suspects that white and shiny synthetic anorthite being developed in collaboration with the Colorado School of Mining is representative of what NASA expects to find on the lunar crust. Yet while the team feels that they can do a “reasonably good job” of matching the geochemical properties of the regolith, says Clinton, “it's very hard to make the geotechnical properties, the shape of the different tiny pieces of aggregate, because they’re built up by collisions with meteorites and whatever has hit the moon over 4 billion years.”

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