NASA’s 3D Printed Moon Base Plans Are Coming Together
NASA is working to not only return humans to the Moon but set up a more permanent human presence. This involves the complex process of creating and designing a large amount of lunar infrastructure for astronauts, supplies, and various demands. In this case, NASA has to think about the cost per launch of materials, the size of structures, and the time it would take to build, just to name a few.
This is exactly why they are trying to come up with more innovative approaches to challenges such as lunar habitats. Only a few months ago, NASA awarded ICON, located in Austin, a contract to develop construction technologies that could help build infrastructure such as landing pads, habitats, and roads on the lunar surface. ICON is a company with a decent amount of experience in 3D printing and its future applications.
While this all may seem very far away as I speak, Artemis is continuing to make progress with the core stage of SLS for Artemis II almost done. A hint at the timeline and future dates that are closer than many think. Here I will go more in-depth into this contract with ICON, what 3D printing on the Moon would look like, the pros and cons of this approach, and more.
ICON Progress
As NASA plans for long-term human exploration of the Moon under Artemis, new technologies are required to meet the unique challenges of living and working on another world. Late last year, the agency awarded ICON, located in Austin, a contract to develop construction technologies that could help build infrastructure such as landing pads, habitats, and roads on the lunar surface. These are three of the most important structures for a sustained presence. The new NASA award will support the development of ICON’s Olympus construction system, which is designed to use local resources on the Moon and Mars as building materials. The contract is quite significant as it runs through 2028 and has a value of $57.2 million.
For years now NASA has been trying to determine the best way to build key infrastructure on the Moon. Excavation robots, for one, will need to be lightweight yet capable of digging in reduced gravity. A large-scale construction system could be autonomous and equipped to work without astronauts’ help. Starting back in 2020, ICON has 3D printed communities of homes and structures on Earth and participated in NASA’s 3D Printed Habitat Challenge, demonstrating a construction method and technologies that may be adaptable for applications beyond our home planet.
In support of NASA’s Artemis program, ICON plans to bring its advanced hardware and software into space via a lunar gravity simulation flight. ICON also intends to work with lunar regolith samples brought back from Apollo missions and various regolith simulants to determine their mechanical behavior in simulated lunar gravity. These findings will yield results that inform future lunar construction approaches for the broader space community, including for critical infrastructure like landing pads, blast shields and roads.
ICON’s development plans are following a “live off the land” approach by prioritizing the use of in-situ / native materials found on the Moon. Known for its advanced 3D printing technology for homebuilding on Earth, ICON began its journey to transform construction with the delivery of the first, permitted 3D-printed home in the U.S. in 2018. The company has also worked on possible Mars applications with promising results. In late 2021, the company was awarded a subcontract through NASA to deliver a 3D-printed habitat, known as Mars Dune Alpha, at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. ICON’s next-gen Vulcan construction system completed a 1,700 square-foot structure, that simulated a realistic Mars habitat to support long-duration, exploration-class space missions.
NASA will use research from the Mars Dune Alpha simulations to inform risk and resource trades to support crew health and performance for future missions to Mars when astronauts would live and work on the Red planet for long periods of time. It features four private crew quarters will be located on one end of the habitat; dedicated workstations, medical stations, and food-growing stations are located on the opposite end, with shared living spaces found in between. Varying ceiling heights vertically segmented by an arching shell structure accentuate the unique experience of each area to avoid spatial monotony and crew member fatigue.
Why 3D Printing?
With so many different materials and options for building, it brings up the question of what benefits does 3D printing provide along with some of its downsides. One of the first big benefits has to do with the autonomous nature and capabilities of special 3D printing machines. Apart of Artemis, NASA will slowly but surely bring more astronauts to the surface of the Moon for longer periods of time. Ideally, the system in place to construct a lot of the large infrastructure projects can work at a constant pace with the only main challenge being keeping it full of lunar material to build with. In this case, initial astronauts could set the system up, leave, and by the time the next crew arrives an entire landing pad is complete. While very ambitious, it could work with enough time and effort.
We can look at ICON’s current technology for homes on Earth to get a better idea of what could be possible on the Moon or Mars. The company’s main system is named Vulcan, which was designed and engineered from the ground up for volume 3D printing of homes with precision and speed. The Vulcan construction system is a combination of hardware, materials, and software to construct homes and large-scale structures. The system is comprised of the Vulcan printer and the Magma portable mixing unit that prepares ICON’s proprietary building material, Lavacrete, for printing. All of this hardware is driven by their BuildOS software suite. BuildOS generates and prepares architecture for printing, then controls the robotic hardware on-site to turn digital plans into physical homes.
While a similar system would likely be much larger on the Moon, the current Vulcan is already big at around 15 by 46 feet or 4.5 to 14 meters in size. The Vulcan is ICON’s third generation, large-scale 3D-printer system for additive construction. The current Vulcan system is 1.5x larger, 2x faster than their previous generation and capable of printing homes and structures up to 3,000 square feet without relocation.
Some of the biggest future structures a system like this would construct would likey be landing pads. A big concern for NASA is creating large landing pads in an area far enough away from habitats and astronauts. This has to do with calculations estimating an immense amount of lunar regolith would be shot up into the air after a rocket landing.
One of ICON’s systems that requires some change on the Moon would be its Magma system. The Magma system feeds Vulcan printers with ICON’s advanced cement-based material, Lavacrete. Using any of ICON’s proprietary Lavacrete blends, the Magma system mixes Lavacrete, additives, and water automatically, depending on current site weather conditions, then supplies the ready-to-print Lavacrete to the Vulcan. Think of Magma as an extremely smart print cartridge, super-sized for home construction. This brings up a few more concerns as a lot of these resources would not be available in mass a quarter million miles away on the Moon.
A positive however is the digital control and automatic nature of the system. ICON’s digital operating system controls every aspect of print operations via an intuitive, simple, and beautiful user interface. The BuildOS system translates floor plans into print jobs and then directs both Vulcan and Magma, using real-time data down to the millisecond to produce the highest quality printed structures in the world. From its powerful CAD and print planning to enable machine learning and predictive analytics for Vulcan robots, this advanced software is trying to bring construction into the 21st century.
In addition, ICON’s Lavacrete can be printed at high speeds while retaining form, enabling homes to be built faster while keeping construction projects on schedule and on budget. Lavacrete, a high-strength concrete, boasts a compressive strength of 2,000 – 3,500 psi. In structural tests, ICON’s wall system exceeded building code design requirements by more than 350%. All this being said, there are a few main concerns that need to be addressed including radiation, temperature, and creating a properly sealed environment.
For example, at the lunar South Pole, the Sun hovers below or just above the horizon, creating temperatures upwards of 130°F (54°C) during sunlit periods. Even during these periods of illumination, soaring mountains cast dark shadows and deep craters protect perpetual darkness in their abysses. Some of these craters are home to permanently shadowed regions that haven’t seen sunlight in billions of years and experience temperatures as low as -334°F (-203°C). With the South Polar region being the destination of future missions, the materials and design of habitats will need to consider these harsh conditions.
Conclusion
NASA is trying to figure out the best way to construct significant lunar infrastructure for future Artemis missions. Not long ago, the agency signed a contract with ICON, a company that specializes in 3D printing structures. In the future, this system could allow NASA to use the lunar resources for landing pads, roads, and habitats, just to name a few. We will have to wait and see how it progresses and the impact it has on the space industry.