NASA awarded a contract worth $57.2 million to ICON, a Texas 3D-printing company, to construct “space-based construction system” on the Moon’s surface.
NASA plans to create infrastructure to allow astronauts to live and work on the Moon. They will need to build their own tools from lunar resources so that they can grow their food, communicate with Earth and explore the Solar System further.
Project Olympus. ICON was tasked to build a machine that 3D prints large structures like blast shields, landing pads, and roads on Mars. This six-year contract, which is close to $60 million, will be used to support ICON’s efforts in research and development to build Olympus and use in situ materials to the Moon.
Jason Ballard (ICON’s founder and CEO), stated that in order to change the paradigm of space exploration from ‘there and again’ to “there to remain”, we will need strong, resilient and broadly capable systems that can utilize the local resources on the Moon and other planet bodies. “Humanity’s first building on another planet will be the final deliverable of this contract, and that is going a be an extraordinary achievement.”
ICON already has Vulcan, a 3D printer for home that is capable of producing components required to build homes in Mexico and the US, built. Olympus however will prove to be much more difficult to construct. ICON will need to create a 3D-printing material that is strong and malleable, made from lunar regolith. It will also have to be able operate in lunar gravity.
Niki Werkheiser is the director of technology maturation at NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate. She stated that “in order to explore other planets, we require innovative new technologies that are adapted to those environments” and would like to see future missions. “We can create the capabilities needed for future missions by pushing this development forward together with our commercial partners.”
Olympus items must be capable of surviving and operating in extreme temperatures. They also need to be shielded from radiation and collisions by micrometeorites. ICON plans to test its hardware through a lunar gravity flight. ICON will also be testing lunar regolith samples that were brought back from Apollo missions in order to understand their mechanical properties.
Olympus will see one of its creations for NASA put to the test. ICON 3D-printed Mars Dune Alpha by ICON, a 1,700-square foot simulated Martian habitat that will be used in NASA’s Crew Health and Performance Analog Mission (CHAPEA) next year. Astronauts will live inside Mars Dune Alpha and conduct mock spacewalks mimicking working conditions on Mars, whilst staying on Earth inside NASA’s Johnson Space Center. ®