Tag Archives: moon
A roundup of the top news On 3D Printing brought you from February 5 to February 10:
Tuesday, February 5
Wednesday, February 6
Sunday, February 10
- 3D Printing Retail Store Hosts Open House in Denver, CO
- Fab Lab of the Week: Westport, CT Library’s MakerSpace 3D Printing
Image credit: ESA.
If you look back at the growth of civilization, we have progressed from building huts out of mud and rock to constructing massive skyscrapers with advanced machinery. Imagine now starting over on the moon. How would you go about constructing livable habitats on the moon? Would you transport everything from the Earth?
Similar to a process developed by Washington State University researchers we covered earlier, a concept developed by Foster + Partners proposes to use 3D printing to construct a lunar habitat from material already on the moon.
Foster + Partners is part of a consortium set up by the ESA to explore the possibilities of 3D printing to construct lunar habitations. Addressing the challenges of transporting materials to the moon, the study is investigating the use of lunar soil, known as regolith, as building matter.
The practice has designed a lunar base to house four people, which can offer protection from meteorites, gamma radiation and high temperature fluctuations. The base is first unfolded from a tubular module that can be transported by space rocket. An inflatable dome then extends from one end of this cylinder to provide a support structure for construction. Layers of regolith are then built up over the dome by a robot-operated 3D printer to create a protective shell.
To ensure strength while keeping the amount of binding “ink” to a minimum, the shell is made up of a hollow closed cellular structure similar to foam. The geometry of the structure was designed by Foster + Partners in collaboration with consortium partners – it is groundbreaking in demonstrating the potential of 3D printing to create structures that are close to natural biological systems.
Simulated lunar soil has been used to create a 1.5 tonne mockup and 3D printing tests have been undertaken at a smaller scale in a vacuum chamber to echo lunar conditions. The planned site for the base is at the moon’s southern pole, where there is near perpetual sunlight on the horizon.
The consortium includes Italian space engineering firm Alta SpA, working with Pisa-based engineering university Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna. Monolite UK supplied the D-Shape™ printer and developed a European source for lunar regolith stimulant, which has been used for printing all samples and demonstrators.
Lord Foster: “This project is a significant and pioneering step in space age construction. Working with our European colleagues, it is part of our on-going commitment to research and innovation.
”Xavier De Kestelier, Partner, Foster + Partners Specialist Modelling Group:“ As a practice, we are used to designing for extreme climates on earth and exploiting the environmental benefits of using local, sustainable materials – our lunar habitation follows a similar logic. It has been a fascinating and unique design process, which has been driven by the possibilities inherent in the material. We look forward to working with ESA and our consortium partners on future research projects.”
Image credit: ESA.
A roundup of the top news On 3D Printing brought you from December 11 to December 16.
Tuesday, December 11
Thursday, December 13
Friday, December 14
- Well… In Late Night News, Now You Can 3D Print Adult Toys at Home
- Life on the Lunar Base: 3D Printing at the Repair Shop
Sunday, December 16
As scientists prepare for the next stage in space exploration and the construction of a lunar base, there is a challenge. What do you do if something breaks? How do you ship repairs from Earth?
The answer is you don’t. Astronauts can use 3D printing to build repairs from moon dust.
Researchers at Washington State University have successfully simulated this process using a composite material similar to moon dust.
The simulant is an expensive combination of silicon, aluminum, calcium, iron and magnesium oxides. Meant to mimic the properties of the regolith found on the moon, the powdery material had a particle structure resembling that of ceramics.
Because of their tendency to crack, ceramics can be tough to manipulate using 3D printers. But the WSU researchers, including husband-and-wife team Amit Bandyopadhyay and Susmita Bose, had previously demonstrated that ceramic-like material can be re-formed with an on-demand fabricator to create custom-made bone scaffolding.
For the new study, the researchers fed the raw simulant powder into a 3D printer, heating the material to high temperatures and printing it out in smooth half-millimeter (0.02 inches) layers to form small cylindrical shapes with no visible cracks. The structures that came out of the printer were about as hard as typical soda lime glass, the researchers explain in a study detailing the recent experiments in the Rapid Prototyping Journal.
“It is an exciting science fiction story, but maybe we’ll hear about it in the next few years,” Bandyopadhyay said. “As long as you can have additive manufacturing set up, you may be able to scoop up and print whatever you want. It’s not that far-fetched.”
Moon photo by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center used under Creative Commons license.