When people go to the moon to either live or work — which NASA’s Artemis flight program is revising from pipe dream to real prospect — they’ll need infrastructure.
Travelers — and residents — will need landing pads to land on, roads to travel on, buildings to work in, hotels and houses to stay in.
Just how to provide those necessities on the moon is the major question that Marshall Space Flight Center’s MMPACT (Moon to Mars Planetary Autonomous Construction Technologies) project is trying to answer.
Among other things, they’re looking at how regolith — the layer of dust, pebbles and rocks that covers the moon’s surface — can be used for construction via a large 3D printer with a robotic arm.
For many, it’s the stuff of science-fiction movies, but for the folks working on MMPACT, it’s a necessity for humanity’s growth in other realms, locations where you can’t just move cranes and other construction equipment to get the job done. And what MMPACT does can lead to thriving communities on the moon and beyond.
“We do get down deep into technical discussions, and then it’s work,” says Corky Clinton, principal investigator and senior advisor, Marshall Space Flight Center Science and Technology Office. “But then you take a step back, and you can’t not get excited about wanting to build humanity’s first home on another planet.”
National exposure
Others are excited by it, too. MMPACT was featured on CBS’ “60 Minutes,” which focused on NASA’s work with Icon, a Texas construction company that uses 3D printing robotics to construct houses and other structures.
Icon and its co-founder and CEO, Jason Ballard, came onto Clinton’s radar when the company took part in NASA’s 2019 Centennial Challenge to build a 3D-printed habitat for deep space exploration. Though Icon advanced in the competition, it couldn’t compete in the finals because of a business commitment.
Later, Ballard brought his son to Space Camp at Marshall and, while there, briefed Clinton and others on Icon’s technology. “We saw immediately that they had made significant advances in the technologies,” says Clinton, who leads the MMPACT team along with project manager and geologist Jennifer Edmunson.
In its work with MMPACT, Icon is developing a space-based construction system that takes the moon’s regolith (simulated regolith at this point, based on samples brought back to Earth by Apollo astronauts), uses a laser to melt it and form it, and dispenses it in layers with a robotic arm to build structures.
Earlier this year, Icon’s mockup of a terrestrial robot arm was tested in Marshall’s V-20 testing chamber, which provides a simulated lunar environment with its vacuum and its extreme hot and cold temperatures. NASA and Icon are analyzing the results to determine next steps.
“We will finish the technology maturation phase of this project by the end of January 2025, and then we’re looking forward to taking this into a flight demonstration phase that would allow us to demonstrate the technology in a lunar mission,” Clinton says.
NASA’s partners
Icon is just one of a number of entities NASA is partnering with on the MMPACT project. Among the partners are:
- Kratos SRE, based in Birmingham, which is developing a tool that will test regolith on the surface of the moon.
- Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ aerospace company with a facility in Huntsville, helping to create lunar landing pad requirements.
- Astroport Space Technologies, a Texas company studying how molten regolith can be made into tiles.
- The Colorado School of Mines, which is providing the regolith simulant.
And there are others, including Drake State Community & Technical College, a Huntsville institution that developed an additive construction curriculum.
“Our role has been to create the workforce to support a trained workforce pool to support NASA,” says Dr. Patricia Sims, the school’s president. “A lot of the work on the MMPACT project is large-scale printing, so we were able to procure a large-scale 3D concrete printer here on campus to print test structures. … The focus of that work is to print concrete structures and test them in different situations that are as close as possible to those that you would find on the moon.”
Sims says the program, which started at Drake State in 2020, has touched about 600 students and teachers. “We’re able to bring teachers on campus during the summer and show them this work, because it’s important that they understand the advances in technology. If you’re in the classroom, a lot of times you don’t get to see that first-hand.”
Artemis continues
MMPACT is separate from NASA’s Artemis project, a series of launches designed to get humans back on the moon and, eventually, to Mars. Artemis I, an uncrewed test flight around the moon, has already occurred. Artemis II, now scheduled for late 2025, will be a crewed flight around the moon. Artemis III will be a crewed lunar landing mission, and other missions will go to the planned Lunar Gateway, a new lunar space station.
“The agency is looking at a deployable habitat … which is probably where the astronauts will go to stay for short periods of time in the early Artemis missions,” Clinton says, adding that what MMPACT is creating will be for the long-term. “We talk about having a sustained human presence and a robust lunar economy.”
And Mars? That’s in Clinton’s sights, too.
“The technologies that we’re looking at today are definitely transferable to Mars,” he says. “The Mars environment is much more hospitable, relatively speaking, than the lunar environment.”
The new frontier
But first things first.
The initial mark of success for MMPACT will be a proof-of-concept demonstration of construction on the moon, says Edmunson. “This demonstration would encompass fabricating a few test pieces and a representative element of a future landing pad,” she says.
That demonstration would be followed by a lunar mission to build a functional landing pad for cargo and human landers and then another lunar mission that demonstrates building a habitat.
“I would expect our industry partners to take it from there, building things like roads, radio telescopes, laboratory and mining facilities and resort hotels on the lunar surface,” Edmunson says.
Key to all of this is getting humans on the moon again rather than relying on unmanned rovers and other equipment, she adds.
“It’s important that humans complete the sortie missions because they are particularly adept at noticing small changes in the surrounding geology,” Edmunson says. “Humans can also make decisions ‘on the fly’ to investigate different areas or select different samples.”
Edmunson is focused on the future while acknowledging the importance of the past.
“The Apollo program did a great job giving us a foundational understanding of the moon, but there is so much left to explore and so much more to learn,” she says.
All of this won’t be easy, Edmunson says, but it’s certainly possible.
“Humans are creative, resilient creatures in general,” she says. “They live in the most remote and extreme environments on Earth and in Low Earth Orbit. They operate differently based on their environmental conditions, and they adapt to changes in those conditions.”
“The moon is the new frontier,” she continues. “It’s humanity’s next greatest challenge.”
Alec Harvey is executive editor of Business Alabama, working from the Birmingham office. David Higginbotham is a Decatur-based freelance contributor.
This article appears in the October 2024 issue of Business Alabama.
