Faxing Structures to the Moon: Freeform Additive Construction System (FACS)

Extra-terrestrial construction processes – Advancements, opportunities and challenges

“…Initially, USC exploited the potential of CC with the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) for a development of ISRU-based lunar habitat (Khoshnevis et al 2005), and later further explored the potential of CC embedded on the All-Terrain Hex-Limbed Extra-Terrestrial Explorer (ATHLETE), developed by NASA JPL (Khoshnevis and Zhang 2012) through a NASA Innovative Advanced Concept (NIAC) project. This ATHLETE was developed as a multi-purpose rover, and NASA started to work with USC to develop a combined concept using both CC and ATHLETE for fabricating lunar construction components, such as a protection cover for a lunar habitat, dust-shield walls, and spaceship landing-pads (Howe et al 2013), through the NIAC initiative. CC and ATHLETE systems have been well demonstrated -their technologies are currently considered to be around Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 3 for space applications -and a preliminary experiment on sulfur concrete using lunar simulant was reported in (Khoshnevis and Zhang 2012).…”

Leveraging in situ resources for lunar base construction

“…The All-Terrain Hex-Limbed Extra-Terrestrial Explorer (ATHLETE) is a robotic rover chassis that can be employed as a precise positioning mechanism for 3D printing large civil engineering structures on the Moon (Howe et al 2013). As civil engineering structures, they would not require precision manipulation and may be constructed from local regolith including prefabricated bricks or 3D printing (such as contour crafting).…”

“…Ground beacons may be employed to increase the accuracy of rover navigation to permit construction, including additive construction, of elements of a lunar base. CAD models of civil engineering structures could be FAXed to the planetary rover from Earth prior to human crew arrival (Howe et al 2013). The elimination of handling of large modules through 3D printing eases the design of the robotic mechanisms.…”

Lunar construction solution: Chinese Super Mason

“…In 2013, NASA proposed that the use of high power laser will be lunar basalt weathering layer and high temperature sintered glass like material, build a lunar base using 3D printing technology [1] ; at the same time, NASA designed a multi legged robot platform corresponding to the moon, collecting raw materials, in the process of the construction preparation and construction [2] . In June 30th, 2017, the United States re-established the National Space Committee, which is directly subordinate to the Executive Office of the president.…”