The Artemis program, that of the return to the Moon, is launched. But NASA aims to build lasting infrastructure on the terrestrial satellite, using 3D printing.
NASA and its partners are working on the Olympus system, a system that would be able to use the materials available on the Moon to build a more sustainable infrastructure. Because the American space agency is considering, with the Artemis program, a longer presence than a simple round trip to the Moon.
>> Space: Artemis 2, the last step before the conquest of Mars
A base, roads, barracks, a take-off and landing area, everything should be built using 3D printing – which is already used to build housing in the United States. This would save tens of millions of dollars by avoiding importing everything from Earth. It’s obviously more complicated to use water in space to make concrete, so the technology would rely on a powerful laser that would make regolith, lunar dust, a building material close to ceramics that can absorb the radiations.
The technology is being tested on Earth for now, with soon the simulation of lunar gravity and the use of samples brought back by the Apollo missions, to verify the viability of the project. It will be necessary to transport all the necessary equipment, a giant 3D printer in particular, hundreds of thousands of kilometers away. A demonstration could take place on the Moon as early as 2026.
Build low-cost housing on Earth
For this project, NASA signed a $57 million contract with ICON, a company from Austin, Texas. Since its creation in 2017, it has already raised nearly half a billion dollars. Obviously, investors believe in the project. “The first object that humanity will build in another world will be the product of a mission carried out in Austin”, welcomes Jason Ballard, the co-founder of ICON. According to him, if our civilizations are as advanced as they think they are, they should be able to create housing that does not put the Earth’s resources at risk. ICON has therefore developed a giant printer called “Vulcan”, and a kind of concrete, “Lavacrete”to build, for example, a structure that will be used to train astronauts for future missions to Mars.
But ICON’s ambition doesn’t stop at the Moon. The company, which printed its first 3D house in 2018 and is working on a construction site of a hundred houses north of Austin at the moment, also has the very concrete objective of building low-cost housing. In a few days, it will launch a competition, the 99 initiative, with architects and designers asking them to propose house concepts at 99,000 dollars. CNN points out that one in two Americans struggles to find affordable housing. The rent would mobilize 50% of the income of 23 million people in the United States.
Finally, ICON claims to seek to reduce the carbon footprint of its “Lavacrete” and rightly hopes that its space projects will help the company come up with ideas to make it happen. “If you manage to build houses in a harsh and isolated environment like the Moon, you will undoubtedly make progress in building houses on Earth”suggests ICON CEO Jason Ballard.