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There are about three years left for humans to set foot on the Moon again. The landing of Artemis III will mark the beginning of a new exploration program that will see the construction of a space station in orbit around the Moon, a base on the surface, and later a staging area for future trips to Mars.
The effort, of course, will be titanic, and there is still no date set for when it will be operational. But after a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract was awarded to ICON with the goal of starting “Research and development of a space-based building system that could support future exploration of the Moon”, we have our first idea.
ICON has been in the business of making home 3D printers for a while. As in 3D printers that will not be used at home, if not actually 3D printed houses. The last time we heard of them was in August, when they showed how a piece of hardware called Vulcan could print a Lavacrete structure capable of housing a HIMARS multi-launch rocket system.
For the Moon project, ICON will work with architecture firms BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group and SEArch + in an attempt to find a viable solution. “Large-scale additive construction system that could print infrastructure on the Moon”. The joint project is called Olympus.
We don’t have details yet on what exactly it entails, but ICON said it will begin its research by testing the lunar soil simulant with various processing and printing technologies, trying to find the best and fastest way to 3D print structures on site.
We also don’t have a time frame to wait for any progress with the research, but seeing how NASA is taking this seriously, we hope it won’t be long until we get a closer look at what Olympus is really all about.
